There’s something relieving in having cast the dice, watching them tumble over the great green felt. A lovely human on your arm, if you were running well, something sweeter to think about. Otherwise, the cigar smoke and cheap colognes swept over your nostrils and you kept watching those cubes toy with your fate like a cat with its dinner.
The house stooped over you like a shadow, like an older cousin who you never fully trusted, but who let you in on the cool shit happening down the street. You didn't ask what they got out of it, just went with the flow and soaked up what you could. Sometimes it was fun.
Staying at the casino was always healthier for you, for your sanity. To not shatter the dream, to keep the threads of your experience whole. Even the air in the rooms spoke of the stinging shame, the mindless glory, the lubricious hunger that was pooled down in the floors beneath you.
To look out the windows was to stare into a portal to the nether, where lives were lived sideways and truths were a shackle. You always kept the blinds drawn shut.