Diary of a Mad Croupier

1

The sun burns today. I wear my cap again, to protect me. The customers look right through me as they slide their shiny, hulking cars into the endless rows in front of Target. One young girl says to the other that I must be wearing a tinfoil hat to keep people from reading my mind. They laugh and I laugh along with them as they rush away. I don’t believe anyone wants to read my mind, but I do have good reason to be afraid.

2
I get some change today, from tourists who are of the easy mark variety. I know they will toss something into my cup just to make me go away. It’s easy enough to make what I need to survive. I take just a few bites of food a day, and when I do, I dread the sensation of chewing because it leads to swallowing which means I will be adding weight to my body. And I don’t want to pack on superfluous mass. If these people ever catch hold of me I don’t want them to sink their teeth into succulent, tender meat. I want them to end up gnawing on gristle and bones. After they eat me they will end up hungry an hour later. Chinese food never fills you up.

3
The weight on my body starts to build up and I know it’s from just shuffling around the same parking lot every day, never venturing farther than Koval to poach a few tourists. I never get any proper exercise. I can feel that I must be over one hundred pounds, so I have to do something about it. Tomorrow I will begin my journey through the desert back to my old house in Mountain’s Edge.

4
Used to take a half hour to drive home from work at the casino along the 215. Walking along side streets it takes much, much longer. And I’m not making very good time because I have to stop for long stretches during the day to avoid the sun. It will take days, more days than I can keep track of in this heat.

5
When I was still a landlord, one night when I was out celebrating, after closing on my third property, I passed by a young couple walking hand and hand out of a bar to the taxi stand.
“Do you have two dollars?” The girl asked.
They were well-groomed and wearing nice clothes and must have burned through all their money on the pricey drinks inside and now it was like a game for them, fun to play at panhandling.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” The girl said. She turned to her companion and they laughed, all shiny faces and beaming smiles.
“You’re right,” I said. “I do. But I’m not giving anything to you.”
My voice was still calm and matter of fact. The couple walked away but I heard the girl say to her boyfriend, “That guy’s an asshole.”
That’s when I lost it.
“I’m an asshole?” I shouted. “Because I won’t give you any money? Guess what you are. You’re a beggar.”
The girl flipped her hair, stopped walking, looked back at me, her lips wrinkling.
“You’re a beggar,” I shouted. “Why not go hang out in a parking lot and start wearing a tinfoil hat? At least do it the right way.”
The girl’s boyfriend started to walk toward me but the girl held him back. I kept walking up to the door of the bar, the bouncer pulled the velvet rope aside when he saw me coming.
“Stupid bitch.” I muttered.
And I should have known then that I might be cursing myself. That I might be damning myself with the very damnation I had launched at that girl that night.

6
The bank took back my houses. One by one. Everything I had worked for and invested into them, gone, no longer mine. The hours and days and weeks and months and years of work spent just to afford granite countertops and hardwood floors and new blinds. Now the countertops and the floors were locked in someone else’s house and the blinds were just piles of garbage in a dumpster when the new landlord upgraded to something newer. Someone always buying something new here. Nothing is ever good enough.

7
At night there are coyotes who walk through the streets of Mountain’s Edge. From a distance they look like stray dogs. From a distance I might look like a stray dog too.
Skinny as a hungry coyote, still as a rock lizard, cold as a snake…

8
The gate code has long since changed at my old community. I know how to get in easily, through a sluice flow in the wall that was never sealed off. I just have to walk through a dry arroyo to get there. I scale the gate to get into the pool and soak in its cool, refreshing waters and pretend I’m in an exclusive spa. I am skinny enough now that I might be able to slip through the bars of the gate, if I weren’t afraid of getting stuck and having someone sneak up and take a bite out of me.

9
Out here the stars are bigger and brighter in the night sky. Mountain’s Edge is still in the city but at its very outskirts, in the suburbs of the desert that never had a chance to attract what they were supposed to. It is so quiet out here I can’t even hear the whispers of people walking by, telling each other that I might make a tasty snack as they keep their eyes locked on me.

10
Tonight the moon is big and bright. On a forlorn pile of dirt, the size of a house, where the construction came to an abrupt halt, there is a coyote, alone and scraggly, separated from the pack. He will get so skinny he will disappear, break down into tendon, muscle, carcass, bone.

© 2010 James Joseph Brown