or chatting about her with other mothers online, Tania tries to find her twenty-three-year-old self on the Ouija board she bought at Toys “R” Us. She figures if a Ouija board can supposedly talk to the dead or people living in other dimensions, it might very well have the ability to reach back in time, too. It hasn’t worked yet, but Tania thinks that maybe she’s just not asking the right questions, thinks that maybe all she needs to do is find someone else to do the Ouija with her, double up on the spirit power, you see, and maybe that’ll do it. And when she finds herself, she’ll tell her to sell that fucking car and concentrate on getting her shit right, because the future is painted in bright colors, baby, and no one will notice you.
In all her years working at casinos in Reno, Las Vegas, and now Palm Springs, Tania has only hit it big once. It was 1996, back when everyone had money, and she was working at the Mirage in Las Vegas. After a particularly good night—Tania can’t remember what that means anymore, but when she tells everyone about Las Vegas in the 90s, she tells them she
pocketed between two and three grand on a weekend night, though that sounds absurd now, the truth probably a good 50 percent below the mythology—she put $500 down on a hand of Caribbean Stud and flopped a royal, and just like that she was $50,000 richer. Taxes took fifteen off the top, leaving Tania with thirty-five; still more than enough at the time to put a down payment on a nice house in Las Vegas, something with a great room, a nice yard, room for a pool, maybe even something on a golf course if she really kept banking at her job. Plus, she still had good credit back then, unlike most of her friends who had to keep changing their phone numbers to stay a few months ahead of the collection agencies, and she loved living in Las Vegas.
Five hours into her shift at the Chuyalla Indian Casino and with just $37 in tips, Tania can’t imagine ever risking $500 on paper again; because, really, she thinks now, making her tenth round this hour through the blackjack tables, that’s all gambling is: placing hope in colored paper. She wonders sometimes if her life wouldn’t have been better if, instead of betting $500 on cards, she’d taken that money to a stationery store and purchased reams of 25-weight linen resume paper. Maybe that investment would have forced her into a better life, one where success was predicated on having something to put on all that paper.
Tania drops off three White Russians, five beers, and a Tom Collins to a kid who is clearly underage, since no one under seventy would have the audacity to order a Tom Collins, and no one over twenty-one would even consider uttering it around a pack of their friends. Not when they could order Courvoisier and pretend to be 2Pac. Do kids still listen to
2Pac? She supposes they do, but Tania remembers listening to him when he was alive, before he became some martyr, and thinking he was just okay, just another guy with mommy issues, like half the men she’d hooked up with since high school. When she decided to adopt Natalya, she threw out her entire gangsta rap CD collection, figuring it wouldn’t be appropriate for her new role as a mother to be singing along to songs about hustling. Plus, she wanted to like what Natalya liked.
Tania winds back to the bar and hands the bartender, Gordon, her orders: four beers, a Sex on the Beach, two Johnnie Walkers, three more White Russians. A blackjack table full of marines in from the base at 29 Palms erupts in a flood of loud obscenities just then, prompting half of the casino to turn and stare.
“Classy people out there today,” Gordon says. “Barely noon and people are trashed.”
“I hate Sundays,” Tania says. “People should just go home. Watch TV. Read the Bible. Something.”
“It’s algebra,” Gordon says. “In order for other people to have a good time, we have to suffer their stupidity, and then someone
In all her years working at casinos in Reno, Las Vegas, and now Palm Springs, Tania has only hit it big once. It was 1996, back when everyone had money, and she was working at the Mirage in Las Vegas. After a particularly good night—Tania can’t remember what that means anymore, but when she tells everyone about Las Vegas in the 90s, she tells them she
pocketed between two and three grand on a weekend night, though that sounds absurd now, the truth probably a good 50 percent below the mythology—she put $500 down on a hand of Caribbean Stud and flopped a royal, and just like that she was $50,000 richer. Taxes took fifteen off the top, leaving Tania with thirty-five; still more than enough at the time to put a down payment on a nice house in Las Vegas, something with a great room, a nice yard, room for a pool, maybe even something on a golf course if she really kept banking at her job. Plus, she still had good credit back then, unlike most of her friends who had to keep changing their phone numbers to stay a few months ahead of the collection agencies, and she loved living in Las Vegas.
Five hours into her shift at the Chuyalla Indian Casino and with just $37 in tips, Tania can’t imagine ever risking $500 on paper again; because, really, she thinks now, making her tenth round this hour through the blackjack tables, that’s all gambling is: placing hope in colored paper. She wonders sometimes if her life wouldn’t have been better if, instead of betting $500 on cards, she’d taken that money to a stationery store and purchased reams of 25-weight linen resume paper. Maybe that investment would have forced her into a better life, one where success was predicated on having something to put on all that paper.
Tania drops off three White Russians, five beers, and a Tom Collins to a kid who is clearly underage, since no one under seventy would have the audacity to order a Tom Collins, and no one over twenty-one would even consider uttering it around a pack of their friends. Not when they could order Courvoisier and pretend to be 2Pac. Do kids still listen to
2Pac? She supposes they do, but Tania remembers listening to him when he was alive, before he became some martyr, and thinking he was just okay, just another guy with mommy issues, like half the men she’d hooked up with since high school. When she decided to adopt Natalya, she threw out her entire gangsta rap CD collection, figuring it wouldn’t be appropriate for her new role as a mother to be singing along to songs about hustling. Plus, she wanted to like what Natalya liked.
Tania winds back to the bar and hands the bartender, Gordon, her orders: four beers, a Sex on the Beach, two Johnnie Walkers, three more White Russians. A blackjack table full of marines in from the base at 29 Palms erupts in a flood of loud obscenities just then, prompting half of the casino to turn and stare.
“Classy people out there today,” Gordon says. “Barely noon and people are trashed.”
“I hate Sundays,” Tania says. “People should just go home. Watch TV. Read the Bible. Something.”
“It’s algebra,” Gordon says. “In order for other people to have a good time, we have to suffer their stupidity, and then someone
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