You are not the sort of person who should be in a place like this at this time of night. You did not expect to be here at all. In fact you should have been miles from here. Hunched over as you are, an untouched, fizzing drink with a lemon slice sitting inches from your hand, you try to imagine which stars had aligned, which cosmic cogs had whirled, which throw of the bones had brought you to this place. This place--and so late at night.
Truth be told, you are not sure if it is night at all anymore. You've been sitting for so long, you haven't moved in who knows how long, and where ever you are, the sure tokens of the passage of time have been removed or been artfully obscured. There are no windows--the front doors you came through you cannot see. There are no clocks anywhere, only mirrored walls covered in neon lights twisted into senseless wormlike patterns, bleeding their Day-Glo garishness against other mirrored walls--an infinity of squiggles. Your biorhythms are no help to you either. Do you feel tired? Hard to say. Do you feel awake? Even harder to say. Hunger, thirst? Fatigue? Impossible to tell now. The circadian chonometry which might have been of some use broke down a long time ago, leaving you stranded in the wasteland of physical needs. You have not slept in weeks.
Passage of time? You have no watch or cell phone. You look at your drink for some kind of confirmation that time is still moving forward rather than stuck in an endless moment. Slight condensation on the outside of the glass, but ice cubes have long since dissolved. Drink still bubbling, but now it's reached room temperature and will get no warmer. Level of liquid only milimeters from the rim. The napkin beneath shows signs that it had once been damp, but in its dryness it has the rumpled crispness of fall leaves. The lemon slice floats like a disembodied smile.
But you must keep going, you must preserve the illusion that you are doing something other than contemplating the thing that you must do.
Correction: Might do. Correction: Should do. Correction: Have been assigned to do. Even better: Been called to do. Your hand pats the worn baize in front of you, another card is laid down beside the two you already have. You pat again, another card. It is a joyless ritual that you have no interest in. You pretend to study what you see before you, you feign the steely calculation of mathematics and probabilities, you look as if you are intently adding up arcane numbers behind your dark glasses, but instead you are really listening to the music of the ambient noise around you. A few human voices, indisctinct. A lot of pings and beeps, the soothing electronica of machines with their secret language whispering dark secrets to one another, tempting the newcomers, mocking the losers.
Very few words here at all. Only symbols--fruits, diamonds, numbers, pips--and shapes--ovals, cubes, spheres, pyramids. Hieroglyphics of a mysterious cult. Priests in outlandish attire and even more outlandish hair-dos preside at altars of felt. Archbishops in shiny suits pace between the empty tables to watch their flocks of humbled believers. What congregants remain in this dimly-lit temple at this hour feed on the ecstasy of their communion--endless supplies of communion drink delivered by pert, too-chatty deaconesses, and piles of chips like communion wafers flowing back and forth across the green. Opiate of the masses.
A sudden break, a pause slightly too long, a break in the otherwise smooth momentum of the table. A momentary absence and you realize just in time--just before your reverie could be mistaken for something other than stunned defeat--that the last of your chips has been lost. The tarot of chance has finally spelled out the fate of all who overstay their welcome. The pregnant pause, the one that indicates oh-so-politely that you should either pay up or leave, hangs over you with implacable insistence. And you let it hang there slightly past the last comfortable second for no other reason than to indicate in your passive-aggressive way that that you will take as much time as you need to decide whether you will stay or go.
Slowly, as not to arouse even the slightest hint of suspicious activity, knowing full well that above you, crammed into the ceilings, are suspended surveillance cameras orbed in opaque glass like vampire's eyes--slowly you draw out your wallet from your back pocket. You fumble around with the cash, pretending to consider whether you will extract one, or two, perhaps ten twenties to toss leisurely on the table in a silent, majesterial gesture. As you do so, you spot the tiny piece of paper, one inch square, white, tucked near the edge of the pocket where the dollar bills have a tendency to get dog-earred. On it, printed in stern copperplate script: the list of names.
You try not to seem too obvious, but ironically you know full well that the best place to keep hidden is right out in the open beneath the steady gaze of eyes and cameras and security guards. In fact, you crave this openness--it is as intoxicating as the drink you have not touched. Still, you will only hazard a quick glance. The less you see it the better.
You compromise and draw out five twenty-dollar bills. They are systematically counted out before you and you are silently issued their equivalent in chips of different colors. Before you, just beyond the horizon that you are willing to extend your gaze, you see the frenzied expertise of hands; you don't bother to look up, there's no point. Only the hands. Almost biomechanical in their regularity and precision. The hands have accepted your offering; you are safe. You have purchased additional rent for the stool you are sitting on, you can stay where you are and contemplate. You can keep putting off the inevitable if you can manage to will the stack of chips in front of you to multiply, to rise, to increase your stature and perhaps your mystique that you can will into existence that which was not there before.
As long as you can keep playing, as long as you do not expend your last cash, you can stay here.
I can stay here, you re-assure yourself. You can put off thinking about the list of names. Instead you can continue to ignore your drink, pat the baize, listen to the chatter of gaming machines singing to each other, study the hands. You can meditate on the significance of the first name on the list, the one that sounds so much like a quaint English hamlet. You consider how to pronounce it properly. You try to imagine what you will say first, whether your voice and inflection will betray emotion, whether it will fail you. You try it out loud, but not loud enough so that the hands can hear you and wonder what you are saying.
"Tedford."
