Mopping and Sopping and Broke

Day 9 - Friday July 25, 2014

I’d left the curtains open the night before so that the sunrise would wake me early, and it did, about six. Why sleep when you could be in the casino losing?

Ablutions, Starbucks, cash the tickets.

I cashed the first ticket - $180 - and got all twenties. I figured I’d keep moving until I found a lucky machine.

What I can tell you is that the lucky machine must have been number eight, because the seven different machines that I tried ate up $180.

It all took less than an hour. Much less. How was I going to get through the day on a $500 bankroll at this rate???

I regrouped a bit in the suite and got a Tex from Kenny saying he was going down to the lobby for a coffee. I Texed back that I’d meet him there.

I hit the True Luxury coffee place and got a brew, and parked it, and thought about the Mandalay Bay elevators.

Mandalay Bay has the worst elevators I’ve ever encountered in a modern building. It just dawned on me that it had almost always been a negative experience. They each have a TV in them, blaring ads at top volume, distorted and grating. They take forever. They are often full. Sometimes you have to wait for quite a while to get one. It’s pretty much everything you don’t want in elevator service, save plummeting to one’s death in a sudden stop at the bottom of an elevator shaft littered with fast food wrappers and stained with grease. No, I had to admit upon reflection, that hadn’t happened yet. Perhaps the day was looking up, when compared to this elevatorial eventuality.

I Texed Kenny a few times and finally got a reply. I’d long missed him. He was too tired to wait. He was going to stay in his room and sleep.

Did he need anything? Was he okay? What could I do?

Just need to sleep, thanks, I’ll let you know if I need anything. And that was all he wrote.

Mentally I stroked through the list of great places we would have been visiting, like the Pinball Hall of Fame, Le Thai, Clark County Jail, and Pahrump. I was on my own again.

The buffet had been pretty good for breakfast, so I headed there again, this time on my own. I had a selection of things but disaster befell my half a bagel, which was perched on a couple of those little grey cream cheese containers, when the Eggman took my plate to put the freshly made omelette on it.

He fucked up and the half bagel did a one and a half gainer straight into the vat of liquid eggs.

“Savvy move, chef.”

The poor guy insisted he would go and get me another half bagel and made some half-hearted moves to desert his cooking station and go get one.

I let him off the hook and insisted it was no problem. I’d just go and get another one.

Full marks to the Eggman’s attitude. And I secretly enjoyed seeing the bagel take a dunking. It’s not an everyday occurrence, I think you would agree.

When you are down almost three large - correction - at that point, I WAS down over three large - you take pleasure in the small things.

One of the things in the plan was to hit the dollar full pay Jacks or Better machines in the high limit bar. I checked my seriously dwindling stash in the safe and found I was down to my last hundred. I left it there, and went down and cashed my second ticket from the previous night.

Then, a little walkabout to Luxor. I hadn’t been on the tram in years so I tried it out.

Took more time than it was worth, but I did get to look up the stately Luxor Sphincter’s nose. It reminded me of my own deviant septum.

It felt good to walk through the same good ole front doors into the good ole Luxor, the place of my Vegas initiation, and our favorite casino for years.

It’s much changed, but the Pyramid Cafe is still there, and the high limit bar, called, astonishingly, the High Bar, was easy to find. And sure enough, they still had dollar 9/6 Jacks at the bartops.

I gave it a go, hoping to get an hour or two of play in, and maybe trigger some teaser offers, like the one I’d gotten at Mandalay Bay. But really, that would be a very lucky occurrence, to last that long on 200 credits.

I played a little while but lost quickly and changed machines. Maybe a mid-morning drink would ease the tension… and that was easily achieved, with the bartender not 3 feet away.

He poured and served, and then turned his attention to wiping down the shelves upon which the super high-end alcohol was stored. This was the primo stuff and all of a sudden, there was the unmistakable but subdued sound of breaking glass.

In wiping the shelf, he’d bumped one bottle into another, and it had cracked down below. Premium tequila cascaded down the front of the bar cabinets in a white yellow torrent that smelled like money. And tequila.

My reaction was immediate.

“NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed, and pretended to start crying.

The bartender coped with the carnage, mopping and sopping.

“Was that an expensive bottle?...” I asked meekly.

“Very.”

“Give me a straw.”

I managed to get Mrs. Flusher on Facetime and she played along with me for a while. But it was a losing endeavor, lasting not even as long as it took me to finish my drink. Two hundred twenty gone… (I’d degenerately taken one from almost the last of the tip money…) not even a quad. Perhaps the bar had been set to high at the High Bar.

I had played three different machines. Had two fulls house, no flushes. No straights. No quads.

Now what? I hightailed it out of there. On the way out I noticed a quarter progressive with the Royal up over $2500. Nice.

Too bad I had no usable money on me.

That moment when your day is clearly in the dumper. It just settles on you like a stinky cloak from the stinky basement of some place that’s musky and stinky and dark and dank.

I was pissed off. I had $100 left from my marker, earmarked for tips and admin expenses and no other cash on me at all.

I’d never been so broke for cash in Vegas, ever.