Someone Else

Chapter 42 (Cleo)

Like all casinos, the Montego Bay was determined to ignore the very concept of time. Clocks were nowhere to be found and with no natural light, it could be noon or midnight. Nobody could tell, which was the point. Something about the timelessness kept people mindlessly pulling handles. Currently, the dearth of people under the age of sixty-five gave the place a Sizzler at four pm kind of vibe. The main stage near the center of the casino stood empty. The live band wouldn't start playing cover songs for hours. Until then, familiar up-tempo tunes blasted from hidden speakers. Cleo bobbed her head to the beat as Earth Wind & Fire's Let's Groove Tonight cross-faded into the Gap Band's Oops Upside Your Head. 70s funk had never felt so white.

The unholy combination of sights and sounds was amplified by the purple and green neon lights that snaked across the ceiling and walls, giving off a sickly glow. The colorful, paisley pattern in the carpet made the floor pulse with a motion that seemed dangerous for one's balance after too many drinks. Underneath the music, ever-present electric beeps and bells emanated from the slot machines. The plinking of actual metal into buckets had been phased out a couple of years back in a wickedly ingenious move by the casinos to switch from coins to credit.

"Kinda dead at the tables," Jeff observed, after the couple had walked past a row of empty blackjack tables, behind which stood stoic dealers with purely businesslike smiles cutting sharply across their faces. If he had told her the dealers were animatronic robots that only came to life when someone sat down in front of them, she would have believed him.

The couple walked with their fingers intertwined, as if they were newlyweds. "Whaddya say we kick things off with roulette?" Jeff gestured to a table in the center of the room where an old lady made some last second fine-tuning to her bets as the wheel spun. "We each put one-hundred dollars on our favorite number—start this thing off with a bang!"

Cleo tried to muster up a smile of enthusiasm. She distinctly remembered Pete telling her roulette was for suckers. All the games were, according to Pete. Except for poker. Poker required actual skill. If you could beat the other players, you'd win money. All the other games were played against the house and everyone knows the house always wins.

As the couple watched from a distance, Cleo tried to get her bearings around the baffling game by watching how the old lady placed her chips all across the number board—definitely not on one number only.

Jeff focused his attention on the ball that zoomed around the edge of the wheel before dropping into the numbers, leapfrogging around with a rattle before finally settling onto the winner. "What's your favorite number?" He asked, as the old lady began to lay down her bets for the next spin.

"I don't know...it seems..." She gave an indecisive shrug of her shoulders.

"Positive thoughts," he interjected with a gentle squeeze of her hand. "We've got this."

Cleo studied the numbers, willing herself to pick a winner. "I guess, red thirty."

Jeff reached past the old lady to place a hundred dollar bill on the number thirty. "And I'll put mine on black eleven."

As the dealer pushed some chips around with his long curved stick, Jeff settled into a confident stance, but he gripped her hand a little too tightly, giving away his apprehension. The dealer set ball in motion with an elegant flick of his wrist. "Look, Jeff said pointing. "Our numbers are together on the wheel. That's got to be a positive sign, right?"

Cleo stared at the spinning wheel, red thirty and black eleven were butted up as close as she and Jeff were now standing. "Like we're meant to be together," he continued, putting his arm around her shoulder.

But as the ball whizzed around, she had other thoughts. She suddenly wondered why she had picked thirty, a number that had always held negative connotations for her. Thirty was the end of her dream—the number where her age would become an obstacle too formidable to overcome. She should have picked twenty-one—a happy number full of promise. The impression came on strong enough that as the wheel began to slow down, she shrugged out from under Jeff's arm and reached toward her bet to switch it to twenty-one. At that moment, the croupier held up his hands, almost as if apologizing, and said, "No more bets."