Chapter 7

Eva spent more time looking at her phone than the show right in front of her. You've seen one "classic" Vegas show, you've seen them all. Did not help that this particular stage-stomper crammed as much into one night as they possibly could. The scantily clad burlesque dancers shared numbers with Rat Pack impersonators and a sizable Elvis who married a touristy couple live on stage, and Eva and Ian were the front-row witnesses applauding as if they were happy for the man and woman who looked young enough to barely be in college.

"Gooood luck with that." Eva dropped any pretense of excitement when the stage darkened, and the MC told a few jokes while the set changed. The only reason she had donned a perky smile and clapped with frivolous joy was because she knew how easy it was to spot her this close up in the audience. That was the fun of these "great seats" that had come packaged with the hot date beside her.

"I've got a hundred on six months," Ian said across their table. "You in? We're in Vegas."

"Please. We know it's going to be more like an annulment as soon as they get home. Besides, how do you plan on figuring out who they are and following up?"

Ian shrugged. "You in or not?"

Eva shook on it.

This is what twelve grand gets you for charity. At least Nadia was out with a woman that night. Wait, would I rather be with Lacey Cruz or Ian Mathers? Both were unappealing for separate reasons, but Lacey was an attractive woman… and Ian was someone she knew, so there was that.

Seems so wasted on me. The fact that Kathryn refused to take Eva's place so she could have a "night in" with pot and a bath killed Eva, but here she was, doing her friend a solid and going out with said friend's husband.

"You know what I've always wondered?" Ian asked after flagging down a waitress for another watered-down cocktail. "How do they keep their girls contained in those tiny outfits? Fashion tape?"

It took Eva three seconds to realize what he was talking about. "Those bra tops are sturdier than they look. Trust me, there's no busting those things if they're put on correctly."

"So you've tried it?"

"You mean you haven't?"

"Believe it or not, I've never slept with a Vegas showgirl. Plenty of other scantily clad women, but not a showgirl."

"My God, there's something I've beaten you to?"

"I have a feeling you've done plenty of things with women that I've only dreamed of."

Eva slapped the table, almost knocking off her empty martini glass and the smaller plates of tapas that had made up their supper.

There was no more conversation once the finale began. Loud, raucous music complete with a live band and pyrotechnics assured there was no possible way for Eva to hear what her tablemate said, let alone the thoughts in her head. At least the view is nice. The showgirls were decked out in their feathers and headdresses, high stiletto heels prancing against the stage as they ascended stairs and blew kisses to the audience. The overwhelming sights and sounds of a Vegas show didn't usually bother Eva, but maybe she was getting older. Ian wasn't exactly as enamored as he might have been ten years ago, either. This is it. This is Vegas now. Phone cameras popped up into the air all around them, but Eva had no interest in taking video or pictures of the flashy women and half-naked men performing their choreography on stage. None of these girls are paid enough to wear out their joints like this. That was it. Eva's proof that she was getting old. Won't somebody think of their joints!

The applause was thunderous in the theater. While Eva and Ian were more muted in their enthusiasm, they knew that this wasn't their chance to escape and go back to their rooms. They still had an "obligation" to attend the backstage tour sometime in the next ten minutes. If the host completely forgets us, that's okay too.

Most of the theater had cleared out when Eva could finally hear her conscience again. Yet before she could make a "wanna get outta here?" joke to Ian, a man in a casino T-shirt approached, voices cracking over his walkie-talkie.

"You two are the ones here for the tour, right?" the man gruffly asked.

Oh, boy.

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"You have to be firm with your intentions, but gentle with your flick." Lacey demonstrated with an easy twist of her hand. Two dice clinked against the craps table while a growing crowd surrounded them. The croupier was happy to announce that Lacey had achieved the elusive snake eyes that had everyone at the table applauding her valiant victory. Lacey held back a smirk of self-satisfaction before claiming her chips. "It takes a lot of practice, but if you've got the knack for it, this isn't a bad game to waste your time playing."

More people pushed against the table. Nadia was likewise smashed up against Lacey, who wrapped an arm around her and shooed some of the tipsy attendees away. "I've never been good at casino games," Nadia said as she ignored the heat emanating from Lacey's body. She's packing a bit more under her clothes than Eva. Nadia was so used to fitting perfectly against her wife's flat body that this was a new experience all over again. She smells different. Wow. What a perfume. Subtle, but with a definitive statement. It said that Lacey knew what she liked but wouldn't push herself on others.

"Would you like to throw my next round?"

The dice appeared before Nadia. She shook her head and waved her hands over the table. The men and women crammed around them cheered for her to try it. Lacey already made a bet. The croupier patiently waited for a decision while keeping a close eye on the crowd. A security guard had appeared a few yards away.

"I couldn't! It's not even my money!"

"All the more reason for you to take a chance. It's low stakes for you, Nadia."

Lacey picked up the dice and put them in Nadia's hands. Some of the rowdier tipsy women behind her clapped and whooped. Another woman with a tight T-shirt and short hair cried that Nadia had to take the opportunity. Yet it was Nadia who held the dice, and it was Nadia who had to remember Lacey's lesson. If she could…

"Like this." Before Nadia knew it, Lacey was right behind her, pressing her into the table and wrapping both hands around Nadia's wrists. As blood rushed to her extremities thanks to her pounding heart, Nadia gathered the courage to flick her wrist as she had seen Lacey do it. The fact that her date helped with a pinch to the wrist here and a push against the arm there made Nadia think that her result wasn't terrible. Surely, it would have been worse if Lacey wasn't wrapped around her!

Although Nadia didn't win them anything, she still received a round of applause. She chalked it up to the lovely woman treating her to private lessons in a Vegas casino.

"I can see why you think this is a fun date idea," Nadia said as they sauntered across the casino floor, taking in the sights, sounds (and smells) of a bustling Saturday night. Between the bachelorette parties, the college grads, and the honeymooners blowing on each other's dice for luck, it was a veritable feast for an extrovert's needs. Usually, Nadia wasn't interested. Tonight? I've got at least two more hours in me! "It's something you know a lot about, and not something everyone gets to do."

Lacey tore her eyes off a poker game. "I'm not going to tell them," she said to Nadia, who already felt a conspiracy afoot, "but they've got each other's cards that they're waiting for."

"Don't tell me you're working tonight."

"What? No." Lacey returned the hello of a casino employee on his way to a back room. "I think they're on to me anyway. I can only spend the occasional weekend in one place before word gets around that an undercover operative is sniffing. Case in point." A woman in a vest branded with the casino's logo flashed a friendly smile as she finished closing up her table. "You count cards at one table and catch the dealer not paying attention…"

They reached the penny and quarter slots, most of which were currently occupied by an eclectic mix of gamblers trying their luck at feast or famine. "Do you ever check the slots?"

"Not really. Issues with slot machines usually come down to tech support or, in the case of one band of gamblers, gaming their glitches. Not my realm, but I know people who check that out. They're way techier than me."

"Do you like playing slots?"

"Do you?"

Nadia shook her head. "To be honest, I don't like gambling. Maybe if people didn't have so much at stake… you see the way the economy is, how people like my parents would be struggling if it weren't for me, and places like casinos reek of desperation." They stopped by a column separating the slots from the hallway leading to a shopping mall. "Every time I'm here I count how many people I see camped out on slots at 7 pm and are still there when I go to the gym at 6 am. You're lucky if they have any light in their eyes."

"Yes, addiction is a huge issue. That's one of the charities I got into during the pandemic." Lacey leaned against the column, her hot pink suit wrinkling before Nadia's eyes. "Gambling addiction took off when the in-person casinos closed, and the online ones went into overdrive with the marketing. Suddenly, you had people who took physical cash with them to the casinos gambling with ‘hypothetical' digital money. You don't think about how getting in your car, driving to the casino, and getting too tired to do anything but go home saves you more money than gambling on your phone or laptop. Assuming you have an addictive personality." Lacey sighed. "So, when I suddenly had all of this free time on my hands, I got into fundraising for gambling addiction counseling, support groups, and stuff like that. It was my gateway drug into the whole industry as a career."

"Wow…" Nadia didn't think it was possible to see Lacey in an even nicer light, yet here she was, relating to a woman who did things that Nadia wished she had time for. Do I really not have time, or am I not prioritizing correctly? In twenty-four hours, Lacey had already made Nadia question how she lived her life in proportion to everything out there that could use the extra help. "Sounds like you've really figured out what you want to do with your life."

"I don't like seeing people be taken advantage of."

"Yet you do consulting work for casinos to help them stop getting screwed."

"The way I see it, casinos are an ecosystem that people are drawn to whether I like it or not. My audits aren't only picking out which employees aren't properly doing their jobs based on the standards set out by the company. I also discover things about the establishment itself. Last year I had to report an Atlantic City casino to a commissioner because they were so blatantly cheating that decent poker players were losing their houses. It's a fine line between morality and some of the more libertarian ideologies. So… it exists. Maybe part of my job in combatting the gross corners of it is calling out the egregious acts that only serve to make the house richer."

Nadia nodded along, although the loud noises and bright lights of the casino nearby made it difficult. How can I lose sight of what she's talking about? I care about these things too! Granted, Nadia had never put her passion into things like (gambling) addiction but talking to Lacey put a renewed fervor in her veins.

There was always something better to do with her life. Shouldn't that be extra so when she now had the financial privilege to help?

"I want to show you something." Lacey jerked her thumb toward the quarter slots. "Walk through with me. Take notice of the people gambling and how they seem to be doing. I want to see if a pattern pops out to you."

Lacey and Nadia walked side by side through the slots, where half of the machines were occupied by gamblers from all walks of life. One corner was commandeered by a group of foreign tourists encouraging each other to put in another coin. Nadia couldn't understand most of what they said with their mouths, but their body language was universal. "Go on, man! One more coin! You've almost got it! Isn't this fun?" A whole row of machines was occupied by sorority sisters enjoying a break from studying. Most wore sweatshirts and T-shirts advertising a local Nevada university, so they hadn't traveled far, but one girl constantly checked her phone and asked when they could get back in the van and head home.

"People are having fun… I guess," Nadia said.

Lacey nudged her and gestured to the other side of the floor.

It was locals, based on what they wore, the pets they held in their laps, and how they engaged (or didn't) with the world around them. Most were in their own universes, smoking with one hand and pulling the lever with the other. The waitresses taking drink orders knew them by name, going as far as to ask how their children, spouses, or siblings were doing. Occasionally, Nadia spotted couples or small groups of friends hanging out together, but their focus wasn't on one another or being in the moment. It was on the machine.

Every so often, one of them won a few bucks. The money went right back into the slot. One woman quipped, "That buys me another five rounds!" No, not five rounds of drinks. Five spins on the dollar slots.

"People can spend their money how they want, I guess," Nadia said.

"Sure." Lacey shrugged. "Who's to say who is a gambling addict and who isn't? We're surrounded by dopamine machines, but that's not what I'm showing you. Take another look."

Someone on the far end of the floor won a few hundred dollars after a lucky pull. The middle-aged man in cargo shorts and a collared shirt didn't look like a local, but he also didn't completely blend in with the tourists and young people out having a good time.

"How about that!" The growing crowd around him was a mix of his entourage and the people passing by who wanted to congratulate him on winning. An employee approached to congratulate him as well, but Nadia had a feeling that other things happened behind the scenes. When she glanced at Lacey, she received a curt nod.

"He'll be allowed to play on the machine a bit more if he wants," she said only loudly enough for Nadia to hear, "but if it's ‘hot', don't be surprised if it's suddenly down for maintenance inspection."

"What are you showing me though?"

"Out of everyone we passed, who won a bigger pot? Was it the lovely tourists from a country where gambling is illegal? The kids who are peer-pressuring each other to play? Or the people who have sat in those seats every weekend for years, winning enough here and there to give them the hit to keep going?"

"No?"

"No. It was the man made of a million dollars. Maybe he's not that rich, but there's a pattern to these places." Lacey kept her mouth shut when the lucky man in cargo shorts approached, handing out tokens he had won from the machine. Nadia soon found ten dollars' worth of tokens in her hands. She didn't know what to do with them.

"He sure seems happy…"

"He can afford to gamble. Low stakes, anyway." Lacey brushed up against Nadia as she plucked a token from her hand. "He's even giving it away because he doesn't need it. Five hundred dollars is what he spends on dinner, and he won."

"How could the machine know he was rich, though? Surely, you're not implying that things are rigged to let people like my wife win."

Lacey chuckled. "Of course not. Machines have no idea. A quarter or a penny is another coin to them. Although, I can assure you that when a human is involved, things can get surprisingly… rigged. In a legal way, of course. You want those whales to keep coming back and funding your privately owned enterprise. No, no. You see, with the machines, it was that lovely gentleman who could afford to gamble. Even if the machine is shut down for ‘maintenance' and the next Joe Schmoe who tries it loses his quarter… well, it doesn't matter. It has done its job. Dangled a carrot before the face and promised people more if they sit for an hour longer."

"Interesting…"

"You'll see it more often now that you know. Casinos favor the rich."

Nadia took her free tokens to the locals. The first person to make eye contact with her was an elderly man with a leashed Chihuahua in his lap.

"I don't need this," she said to the man who eyed her suspiciously. "Have fun."

He barely uttered thanks when she turned away and rejoined Lacey by the wall leading to the restrooms.

"Paying it forward?" she asked.

Nadia tugged her waistline back into place. "As I told him, I don't need ten dollars."

"Thus, you've marked yourself as the next lucky winner of this illustrious establishment."

"What do you mean?"

Lacey offered her arm to her fake date. "You don't need the money, thus you will probably win some money. Such is the circle of life."

Nadia still didn't quite get it, but she was happy to take Lacey's arm and stroll toward the end of their date.