F. Wilson - The Select

Tim reached over and patted her knee. "You will, Quinn. By the time we get to AC, all will be clear. And then we'll both beat the system."

*

Atlantic City wasn't at all as Quinn had pictured it. The postcards and photos she'd seen over the years had shown sunny beaches, tall, new, clean buildings, and a wide boardwalk filled with smiling, happy people. The city she saw as they came in from the marshy salt flats was old, worn, battered, and beaten, with vacant store fronts, peeling paint, rotting shingles, and broken windows. Equally dilapidated people—most of them black—shuffled or slunk along the narrow, crumbling, littered sidewalks in the halogen glow of the streetlights.

"This looks like Beirut," Quinn said.

"Yeah, but it's a Beirut laid out by the Parker Brothers."

Despite the desolation, Quinn had to smile as they passed the avenues: Atlantic, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania...

"Right. Monopoly. I've bought these streets plenty of times. But I'd be taking a lot better care of them if they were still mine."

"Consider this your reality check before stepping into the land of make believe."

They turned onto Virginia, and moments later they were entering an Arabian Nights Neverland. Smooth, well-lit pavement lined with stone elephants led down a long, walled entry to a maharajah's palace—or rather a Hollywoodized vision of a maharajah's palace, with candy-colored cupolas and faux-Arabic script spelling out "Donald J. Trump presents the TAJ MAHAL." Tim pulled to a stop under the canopy where turbanned attendants unloaded their baggage and whisked the car away to the hotel garage.

"Sort of like stepping out of Kansas into Oz, isn't it," Tim said as they followed their bags toward the registration desk.

Quinn thought of the desolation outside and the costumed attendants swirling around her now in the opulent lobby.

"More like entering the Masque of the Red Death."

Tim gave her a sidelong glance. "Nothing like an upbeat literary analogy to set the tone for the evening."

As the porter led them to the registration area, Quinn noted that the faux-Arabic script was everywhere—over the restrooms and over the VIP check-in desk where they stopped.

"Can we have two beds?" Quinn said to the woman as Tim handed his comp invitation across the counter.

"I'll see what I can do, ma'm." She checked her computer screen. "Yes. That will be no problem."

"No problem for you, maybe," Tim muttered.

Quinn laughed.

*

As soon as the bellman was gone, Quinn tossed her bag onto the king-size bed near the window.

"I've got this one!"

Tim dropped his on the other. "Then I guess this one is mine."

Compared to the rest of the hotel, Quinn thought the room was rather ordinary. Almost a relief not to see minarets on the bedposts.

"We can unpack later," she said. "Let's go downstairs. I'm not underdressed, am I?"

He laughed. "No way. There's not much in the way of a dress code on the gaming floor."

"Good. Are we ready, then?"

She was getting into the mood, giving in to a growing excitement. She couldn't help it. She wanted to see the casino and try out Tim's plan.

"Fine with me," Tim said. "But how about a quickie before we hit the tables?"

She could tell he was kidding—well, half kidding. And she was almost tempted...

...No foreign entanglements...

She played indignant and pointed to the door. "Out."

"For good luck?"

"You told me you didn't believe in luck."

He hesitated. "I did, didn't I. Why do I say things like that?" Then he brightened. "But I'd sure as hell consider myself lucky if—"

She pointed to the door again. "Out!"

*

Quinn was taken aback by the casino's gaming floor. She'd expected the flashing lights and the noise, the bells, the clatter of the slots, the chatter of the voices, but she wasn't prepared for the crowd, for the ceaseless swirl of people, and the layer of smoke that undulated over the tables like a muslin canopy.

She paused at the top of the two steps that led down to the gaming floor, hesitant about mingling with the flowing crowd. Everyone down there seemed to know what they were doing, where they were going. Suddenly she felt a little lost. She grabbed Tim's arm.

"Don't lose me."

He patted her hand where it gripped his bicep. "Not a chance."

He led her gently into the maelstrom.

"First we'll take a walk, get you oriented, then we'll find us a table and relieve Mr. Trump of some of his money."

Quinn couldn't say exactly what she had expected to see in a casino, but this was not it. Not by a long shot.

But it was absolutely fascinating.

She had always been a people watcher, and this was a people-watcher's paradise.

First they had to wade through the phalanxes of slot machines with their dead-eyed players, most of whom seemed old, and not too well dressed. Each stood—except for the ones in wheelchairs—with a cup of coins in the left hand, and a cigarette dangling from the lips as they plunked in coins and pulled the lever with their right hand. The machines dutifully spun their dials, and then the procedure was repeated. Endlessly. Robots playing robots. Even when the machines clanked coins into the trays, the players showed no emotion.

Quinn had a sense of deja vu, and then she remembered an old silent film, Fritz Lang's Metropolis , in which laborers in the city of the future were shown working the machines of the future, pulling levers with soulless ennui.

But this was no dank subterranean factory. Dozens of huge, magnificent chandeliers were suspended in recesses in the mirrored ceiling. Lights flashed everywhere.

She heard excited shouting from a group of men crowded around a table.

"What's that?"

"Craps. I've tried to learn that game for years but I still don't understand it."

"They sound like they're having fun."

"That's because they're winning. But you can lose your shirt before you know it in that game."

She followed him to the blackjack section, aisles of curved tables, some full, some empty.

"Can we get a non-smoking table?"

"That's not one of my criteria," Tim said, "but I'll try."

"There's nobody at that one," she said, pointing to a table where a female dealer stood with her hands behind her back, staring blindly ahead over an empty expanse of green the color of sunlit Astroturf. She wore a purple vest festooned with gold brocade over a white shirt fastened at the throat with a gold broach. All the dealers, male and female, were dressed identically. "We could have it all to ourselves."

"We don't want it all to ourselves," he said. "It'd take forever to work through the shoe."

"But she looks lonely."

"Quinn..."

"Sorry."

They wandered up and down the blackjack aisles. Quinn watched Tim's eyes flickering from table to table, searching.

"What are we waiting for?"

"I'm looking for the right table," Tim said. "It's got to be nearly full and the dealer is just starting a new shoe." He stopped, staring. "And I think I just found it."

He led her to the right.

"But it's only got one seat."

"That's for you."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll be standing right behind you, teaching you the game, waiting for another seat to open up."

Quinn saw cigarettes in the hands of two of the four players already at the table.

"About that non-smoking table?"

"Quinn..."

"Sorry."

*

As Tim pulled out the end seat on the dealer's right and held it for Quinn, he scanned the cards on the table. This was the first hand. He'd seen one of the players placing the yellow cut card and had moved quickly, despite the table limits: minimum $10 / Maximum $500. He would have preferred something higher. Once the cards already played were photographed and filed in his memory, he squared Quinn at the table and dropped twenty one-hundred-dollar bills on the table.