Cha-Ching! Read Online Free PDF Page B

nodded.
    â€œYou want to learn how to do this?”
    â€œOkay.” She counted two hundred dollars in twenties out of her pocket and held the money out to him.
    â€œPut it down on the table,” he said, refusing to touch it. “You’re going to laugh at how easy this is.”
    Theo elbowed herself in among the small group of men and exchanged two hundred dollars for three small towers of chips. She could see Mark’s eyes getting sweaty as he stood there telling her where to put the bets. He wouldn’t touch the chips or the money because then he wasn’t technically gambling, just like you’re not technically touching the stripper during the lap dance if you keep your hands off her tits. But the gambler in him was alive as he told Theo what numbers to plunk her chips on. One of the rowdy guys threw the dice and everyone groaned. Theo looked at Mark, who signaled for her to put a new stack of chips where she’d just had them.
    â€œDid I win?” Theo asked.
    â€œNot yet,” Mark said.
    Another rowdy guy threw the dice and Theo watched as they bounced around inside the table.
    â€œFuck,” Mark hissed. “This is the time.”
    But the result was the same the next five or six times the dice were thrown, until in less than five minutes under Mark’s tutelage she’d lost her entire two hundred dollars and still didn’t understand how the game worked.
    â€œI’ve never seen dice so unlucky,” Mark said.
    It was such a gambler thing to say. Gamblers believe dice are oracles or monks or soothsayers—anything but just white plastic cubes, painted with black dots. Mark followed Theo away from the table and she could see the hunger in his eyes; he didn’t want to leave the casino. She wanted to ditch him so she could focus on winning her money back, but she felt weirdly codependent with this stranger. As they walked up and down the rows of slot machines she understood every single step he took, the whole game of trying to walk casually when every cell just wants to hurry up and sit down and shove some goddamned money into a slot machine to feel those bright-colored packets of endorphins hanging like candy bars fall and dissolve in her brain.
    There are so many different kinds of video slot machine themes that it shouldn’t be hard for anyone to find one that appears to hold their very own destiny. Slot machines with lisping auctioneer bulls, and romantic cats that speak French, and goats that are surgeons. Theo always gravitated toward slot machines with animal themes because one day she wanted to have a small farm with a tiny country house and a duck pond. But instead of saving money for a house where she could have a long, gravel driveway flanked by attack geese, she sat in front of slot machines trying to line up a bunch of geese in tuxedos.
    â€œPlease God, please just give me one more goose.”
    Mark steered them to a Playboy Bunny machine and said, “What about this one?”
    Theo had figured she knew the target audience for the Playboy slot machines, and now it was confirmed.
    She had forty dollars left in her pocket and pushed it into the bill feeder. She hit the spin button wishing with every fiber in her being for a miracle. But, despite Mark saying, “This machine’s gonna heat up. Just wait!” she lost her forty dollars in an excruciatingly short amount of time.
    â€œWell, I’m broke,” she said, getting up from the slot machine and feeling in her pocket for the room key.
    â€œOh,” Mark said. He seemed surprised, like she was abruptly ending a date and now he was going to have to figure out what to do with his life.
    â€œGoodnight,” she said, through with being polite. She headed back to her room.
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    Theo had awakened something ugly inside herself, and while she’d managed not to drink she didn’t want her new start in New York to be tarnished with her old demons. She felt