March 2, 2010
Last Chance, Part Two of 10
Around seven in the morning, the bus arrived in Tunica. The lump of hundred dollar bills sat sweating in my pocket like a sponge. I could feel it pressing against my leg, begging me to take it out. I caught a cab and told the driver to take me to a poker casino, any of them, didn’t matter. He nodded in the rearview and drove off without a word.
I was dumped in front of a mammoth block of a building called the Grand. Even at this early hour there were hundreds of cars left glinting in the already stingy morning sun, glinting off the windshields as if to blind and entrance possible passersby. I crossed through the parking lot and over the ramps that bridged American soil with the hunks of whatever that the casinos floated on, thus making their poker gambling legal. That made me wonder- could I kill someone in here? A black man in a maroon uniform held the door and wished me luck.
Inside, cold air gushed down from overhead as I walked in on a sea of blipping, blinking machines. The place was glowing and alive. Everything, everywhere made electronic spinning sounds, like cartoon characters getting KO’d. At row after row of slots people sat in black cushioned chairs feeding money into nowhere, their eyes gone sterile to the effects of the screaming lights and buzzers. Despite the chaos, my overwhelming feeling was of relaxation. I want to get this kind of feeling playing poker online.
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