He’d stop and play a quarter slot every once in a while. Won four bucks, lost it, won five, moved on with his green paper cup and lo, look-it there… a woman playing two machines at once, her territory staked out with a drink, two cups of coins and her purse there on the counter. Look at her, no wasted motions. She’d insert a coin, give the handle a yank and step to the other machine as the first one spun. A payoff less than a big one not even making her pause to look. Back and forth feeding half-dollars like she was working on a factory line. Letting up, but only to get out a cigarette. Now there’s a cute woman, Teddy thought. Right around sixty, hair a pretty henna color that went with her gray knit pants suit and pink blouse. Her glasses flashed as she looked at a big heavy woman who stopped by her and said, “Marie, we’re going over the deli get a bite t’eat.” Marie lit her cigarette, blew smoke at the woman and said, “Go ahead.” Independent little woman, wasn’t she?
Teddy said, God, let her win. She deserves it.
Vincent stood with his hands on the metal rail looking straight down through the angled pane of glass at a blackjack table where two men and a woman were playing with green chips; he could read their cards. “It’s so close to everything.”
“But when you’re down there you don’t notice it,” Nancy said. “We’re part of the sparkling decor. No one looks up anyway.”
“Covers the whole floor?”
She nodded, indicating the length of the catwalk. “Goes all the way to the end, over to the other side of the room and comes back.”
“You have people in here?”
“Sometimes, or if they spot something on the monitors, a dealer slipping a chip behind his tie. Or a player they think is cheating, like trying to double his bet after the dealer shows his cards.” Nancy had moved close to him, their arms touching. “At the moment we’re alone.”
She stared through the glass at the floor below, letting him look at her and feel her close and get the scent of her perfume-more subtle than Linda’s, more expensive. Linda would have said, “We’re alone,” and rolled her eyes at him or given him a vampy look as she reached for his fly; and he’d jump. But it could work either way. Nancy’s method, stagey-serious, must be working because he felt a clear urge to make the next move. Grade it later, what it meant. They were fooling around, that’s all, flirting a little. It didn’t have anything to do with Linda. Except that Linda did appear in his mind and he had to say to her, in there, What am I doing? I’m not doing anything. It was his having been raised a good boy that was trying to hook him with guilt, ruin his chances here. Hell, Linda was a friend, her life was music…
Nancy said, “Tommy’s down there, somewhere. With another one of our big spenders.” She gave Vincent a nudge.
“I still haven’t met him.”
“Do you want to?” Her voice very quiet.
He could hear a hum of sound from the floor. “It’s not important. I don’t think he knows anything about Iris, what happened to her.”
“You’re being kind,” Nancy said. “He knows very little about anything that happens around here.”
Vincent kept quiet.
“He’s drunk most of the time.”
She was telling him to make the move, it was okay.
“I’ve always thought I was a fairly good judge of character. At least had an eye for typecasting. But I really blew it with Tommy. I married him on impulse, much too quickly.”
She was saying, come on, let’s go. What’re you waiting for?
“We talk about business, but it’s been months… Well, never mind.”
And you say, Vincent thought. “What has?”
“Since we’ve slept together.”
Do it, will you? Go ahead. He couldn’t think of anything to say, which was just as well. It was time, very quiet, the urge, the tender feeling there. Tender enough. He turned her face to his with his hand, gently; their mouths came together, he felt her tongue… and heard bells ringing, like a fire alarm, from somewhere almost directly below them. Their faces still close, her nice brown eyes smiling at him, she said, “Jackpot.” Now Vincent smiled. Why not? And closed his eyes again as she closed hers, going for those slightly parted lips.
Well, Marie had quit working her two machines now with the bell ringing and those fifty-cent pieces still coming out, letting up for a few seconds then pouring out again, some spilling on the floor there were so many. Teddy grabbed an empty cup and got down there to pick them up. He set the cup next to her purse saying, “ ‘Ey, you won four hundred dollars. Not too shabby. I just hit two hundred bucks myself over to the Sands. It’s nice, ‘ey?”
Marie raised her eyebrows, proud of herself. She looked at him through smudged glasses; the frames were gray, with sequins. “Them others go and eat all the time. I tell ’em you got to play if you expect to win.”
“That’s the truth,” Teddy said. “And you got to know which slots to play, the ones timed to go off.”
Marie turned back to her scooping, but then looked at him over her shoulder. “I heard it pays it don’t empty. They’s always money in it.”
“That’s right,” Teddy said, “but you heard of frequency modulation? See, the big jackpots are timed to pay off at certain times or frequencies, when there’s lots a people around.”
Marie said she never heard of such a thing.
Teddy looked at his watch. “Well, I got, let’s see, about twenty-five minutes to get back to the Sands where I’m pretty sure a couple half-dollar slots’re gonna pay off. I been watching ’em all day. See, I live right here.”
“You wouldn’t kid me,” Marie said.
“Come on, you don’t believe me. I been studying slots since they opened Resorts, the first one. I don’t even have to work.” He took a quarter out of his pocket and held it up. “See this? Got nineteen seventy-eight on it?”
Marie said, “So?”
“I been playing this quarter for six years. I never lost with it. I hold this quarter over the slot? I know when it’s gonna pay and when it ain’t.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I still have it, don’t I?… You coming or not?”
“I just might. Sands the next one up?”
“Take us fifteen minutes.”
“I got to cash in first.”
“Well, hurry up, will you?”
Act like her kid. If she had one it would seem natural to her if he was grouchy. Marie did; she had three grown sons. She had come on a bus from Harrisburg where she was a checkout girl in a supermarket; they were going home at nine. Out on the Boardwalk Teddy told her she just had time to win another pot. Wasn’t it a beautiful night after all that rain? He told her when he was little they used to go under the Boardwalk and look up through the cracks at girls in dresses. They called it stargazing.
Marie said, “You were a little dickens, weren’t you?”
Teddy said, “ ‘Ey, look. There a bunch a stars out tonight.”
Marie looked up.
And Teddy said, “Oh, no!” He sunk to his hands and knees, got down close to a space between the boards. “I dropped my lucky quarter!”
Marie bent over. “You see it?”
“It fell down underneath. I got a find it.” He worked his face into a frown. “God, wouldn’t you know?… I’m sure it’s right down there, right below us.” He looked at Marie. “You got a lighter, haven’t you?”
She said, “Yeah, but…”
“Come on, we can find it. I know we can.”
LADONNA SAID, “You want me to barf all over the car?” Trying to tell Jackie she was petrified, getting physical about it now. “You know how I feel. How can you even ask me to do something’s going to make me ill?”