Cha-Ching! Read Online Free PDF Page A

was okay or needed some money to go bowling. She didn’t want to go bowling or be in the arcade either, since both places felt like a holding tank. She grew up hating casinos, and it was as if she had some sort of child’s x-ray vision: it was so obvious the only point of a casino was to turn everyone into zombies and steal their money.
    The other point of casinos was to lose money in order to win points to redeem ugly shit like dinner plates and duffel bags, fleece zip-ups and sets of tacky wine glasses. When Theo had grown up and moved away from home, her aunt would regift many of the things she’d gotten “free” from the casino to her when she visited. The most incomprehensible of all the gifts had been a plastic chute that had double-stick tape on the back. It was supposed to be a toothpaste dispenser; affix it to the bathroom wall and it would hold a tube of toothpaste upside down. Theo couldn’t understand why anyone would need it, rich or poor. “Can you use this?” Theo’s aunt had asked, handing her the toothpaste dispenser.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œIt holds your toothpaste.”
    â€œOkay,” Theo said, not wanting to hurt her aunt’s feelings.
    â€œYou don’t know how many people I’ve tried to give this to. You’re the only one who said yes.”
    There was no going back then.
    In the car on the way to the airport Theo’s mother said, “I can’t believe you want the toothpaste holder.”
    Theo hadn’t known not taking the toothpaste holder was a choice, and now she dreaded having it in her possession. She hated clutter and purposefully owned almost nothing. She knew this would be one of those things that remained in its packaging—“Retail Value: $19.99!”—and sat around the apartment collecting dust, a catalyst for a nervous breakdown one day. While waiting for her plane to board, Theo tried to get to the bottom of the mystery. She thought maybe the toothpaste dispenser was meant for rich people; after all, rich people were finicky and needed different things. Like once, in a rich person catalog, Theo had seen a special vacuum for ladies who were very afraid of spiders. The vacuum had a long handle with a snap-on plastic cartridge, and when you sucked up the spider, it stayed in the plastic cartridge. Then you could just throw out the entire cartridge. Theo imagined a landfill filled with plastic cartridges, each holding a single spider. She ended up leaving the toothpaste dispenser in the airport bathroom. Surely, someone could use it.
    The first time Theo ever went to a casino on her own was when a drunk Australian dyke on a visit to San Francisco picked her up in a bar and begged her to go on a road trip. She wanted to have an American adventure, so they drove to Reno and got a room. The Australian was young and femme and rich, and she insisted on paying for everything. After some sex and a steak dinner they wandered around the casino, drunk. She gave Theo a hundred-dollar bill at the roulette wheel and Theo plunked down five dollars at a time on her favorite numbers. The Australian was hanging all over her, biting her neck. The first time the ball landed on her number Theo was surprised, but then it just kept happening. That night everything shifted. Maybe casinos were only sad if you didn’t have special powers like Theo did: She’d made over four hundred dollars in twenty minutes.
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    Theo felt guilty about leaving Cary Grant in the motel room alone while she wandered through the deserted casino. The dog wasn’t used to her yet, and she hoped she would just stay asleep and not have some sort of freak-out. Some of her friends’ dogs had eaten shower curtains and chewed up entire couches in their absence. She stopped at an empty roulette table and bought twenty dollars’ worth of chips. She put five dollars on the number eight and watched the croupier spin the wheel.
    Theo had