"Yes, ma'am," he said.
"Jake," Pauline whispered in his ear, "this is a third of my yearly salary she just handed me. Fifteen thousand dollars!"
"She can afford it," Jake whispered back. "Just go with the flow and have a good time."
"Shall we start out with some blackjack?" Mindy asked them. "That's always been my favorite."
"Uhhh, sure," Pauline said, still trying to come to grips. "Sounds good."
The sat down at the blackjack table, Mindy at third base, Jake at second, Pauline at first. The dealer — a buxom blonde of about twenty — greeted them by name. The cocktail waitress — a buxom brunette of about twenty — came over and offered them drinks. While they gave their drink orders Jake looked around again and saw that every one of the employees catering to them — man or woman — was physically attractive. Even the security guard was a buffed out male that most woman would describe as "a hunk".
"And would you like some cocaine to go with your drinks?" the cocktail waitress offered next.
"You know it," Mindy said. "Line us up."
"We're featuring Bolivian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan flake today. Do you have a preference?"
"Can we get a blend?" Mindy asked her.
"You can get anything you want," was the answer.
"I want a blend," Mindy said.
"I'll uh... have the same," Jake replied, wondering if there was some advantage to blending varieties of coke.
"No blend for me," Pauline said with a giggle. She was obviously starting to get into the experience. "I want Bolivian for the left nostril and Peruvian for the right."
"As you wish," the waitress replied. She headed off to the bar.
"The minimum bet is a hundred," Mindy told them, "but that's for pussies as far as I'm concerned." With that she dropped a purple chip down on the circle. "Oh, and no card counting in here. Its kind of easy for them to catch it, isn't it, hon?"
"I'm sure none of you would do something like that," the dealer replied.
"Just stick to basic strategy," Mindy said. "It's a slight house advantage, that's true, but I've walked out of here with almost a hundred grand before." She giggled. "Of course, I've also walked out of here missing nearly a quarter mil."
Mindy and the dealer shared a laugh at this. Jake and Pauline both began to look a little nervous however. They both put down black chips.
"Pussies," Mindy said with kind contempt.
Over the next hour they drank four potent drinks apiece and snorted four lines of potent, uncut cocaine. Mindy was a skillful and nerveless player, increasing her bets with every win to the point she was plopping down the thousand dollar chips two at a time. Her pile of chips grew from fifteen grand to more than sixty. Pauline was much more conservative with her betting, and not quite as skillful a player, but luck seemed to be with her. When she would hit on sixteen, the dealer would plop down a five or a four. When she would stand on seventeen with the dealer showing a ten, the dealer's down card would be four and the next hit would break her. She was up by more than ten thousand.
"Come on, sis," Mindy chided her companionably every time she plunked down another hundred-dollar chip, or, when she was feeling particularly daring, two or three of them. "Get some balls on you. Throw down one of them yellows."
Pauline, however, could not quite bring herself to plop down a thousand dollar chip on a turn of the cards. Not yet anyway.
Jake was the loser of the group. Though he fancied himself well versed in basic blackjack strategy nothing seemed to be going his way. When he would hit on a fourteen with the dealer showing a face card, it seemed inevitable that he would receive a face card as well. When he would stand on eighteen with the dealer showing a three, she would flip up a seven and then toss down a nine to go with it. Even though he was sticking to one and two hundred dollar bets, he was quickly down almost ten grand.
"I'm gonna go play some craps," he finally said, standing and gathering his remaining chips. "Anyone want to join me?"
"I will," said Bill, who had just come in and received his own share of chips. He was looking like he was in a fine mood.
"All right, Nerdly," Jake said. "Let's do it. Do you know how to play?"
Bill scoffed at him. "Of course I know how to play," he said. "Craps is the one game in the entire casino where it's mathematically possible to negate the house advantage down to even odds."
Everyone stared at him for a moment. Jake finally clapped him on the shoulder. "Does this guy know how to fuckin' party, or what?"
They partied on, drinking, snorting, and gambling while music played endlessly from the overhead sound system. Bill, putting down purple chips one and two at a time, playing the pass and don't pass lines exclusively, and utilizing a system that Jake couldn't even begin to guess at, stayed safely within three thousand dollars of his original fifteen grand. Jake tried playing the odds a little and quickly lost the remnants of his first fifteen grand. Mindy simply blew him a kiss and signed him out another fifteen thousand. She and Pauline, meanwhile, remained at the blackjack table, now sitting companionably together and giggling like old friends. Pauline's luck took a turn for the worse and she whittled away her stake on a series of poorly thought-out plays. Mindy signed her out another fifteen grand as well.
Before they knew it, it was six o'clock in the evening. Mindy suggested it was time for dinner. They were led to a private dining area two floors down and served a huge meal of filet mignon, cracked Alaskan crab legs, artichokes, spinach salad, and a bottle of 1969 Cabernet Sauvignon that went down smooth as silk. For dessert there was Cappuccino Chocolate Mousse Roulade. All were served by well-dressed, attentive wait staff who said little.
"Well," Mindy asked, as she lit her after-meal cigarette and sipped from her water, "what do you think? Do they know how to treat you in Vegas?"
Everyone had to agree that they certainly knew how to treat people.
"Do you know what I like about it?" Jake asked, his head reeling with alcohol and cocaine, his spirits unsurprisingly quite high.
"What's that?" Mindy asked, her hand caressing his thigh.
"Not a single person has asked me for my autograph, or told me how great they think my music is, or told me I was going to hell as a sinner, or even tried sidling up to me so they could tell their friends about it. They're catering to me without seeming to care who I am."
"Everyone who works in the VIP portion of the casino has been instructed on how to act," Mindy said. "They are expected to be friendly, efficient, and discreet."
"Discreet?" Bill asked. "Does that mean they will not give reports to the press about our presence here? Or about the things we did here?"
"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," Mindy said. "That's the prime directive of the VIP staff. It has to be that way or we wouldn't come here and gamble a hundred grand at a time. The casino wouldn't even admit we were guests here, let alone what we did here. And if any of the staff leaked anything to a reporter, security would investigate with everything they had until they found the leaker and fired him or her."
"So Nerdly's mom won't hear about two hookers he had up in his room?" Jake asked.
Mindy laughed and Bill blushed.
"No," Mindy replied. "His mom won't hear about it."
"You had two hookers up in your room?" Pauline asked him. "You? William Michael Archer? Computer nerd and piano geek who was so shy you once threw up when you accidentally walked in on me in the bathroom?"
Bill blushed even darker. It was well known by both Kingsley siblings (as well as their parents) that Bill had always had a crush on the unobtainable Pauline, a crush that had started at roughly the age of four and continued probably to this day.
"When was that?" Mindy wanted to know.
"When he was about twelve," Pauline said, laughing at the memory. "I was sixteen. His mom had come over to visit our mom and had brought Bill along. I went in to go pee and must've forgot to lock the door. Bill forgot to knock and came walking right in on me." She laughed harder and had to take a moment to get herself under control. "You should've seen the look on his face. It was just like he'd seen the birth of the universe and the face of God all in one glance. And then he started to tremble all over and threw up in the sink."