Chapter 3

I was playing Pai Gow Poker at Harrah's in Rincon. It was a Saturday, in the early afternoon, and I was buried by quite a bit. Rincon is an Indian Casino that Harrah's operates for the tribe down near San Diego. In most respects it is similar to Las Vegas as far as the gambling goes. They don't give away free drinks with alcohol though. You can buy them, but they aren't allowed to give them away.

I had moved to the high limit room, after losing my first and second tiers of bets. I was betting the $100-200-400-800-1,600- 3,200 negative progression, and had won back about half the money I needed to get back to my starting tier. Twice already I'd gotten to the sixth and final bet of the third tier. Both times I'd ended up winning.

Progress towards accumulating the winnings to get back to the first tier was slow, because I was going deep into the progression before finally winning. When you bet $800 and win, the house takes their five percent commission, $40, and you end up with a net of only $60 for that cycle. I needed to win $6,300.00 in order to progress back to my first tier again.

With the seasoned gambler, the more money he has at stake, the more narrow his focus. All of my focus and attention was centered on myself, the dealer, and the cards. The last thing I needed or wanted was a distraction at that time.

"Hello again Mr. Book."

I turned my head as soon as I heard those words. When I did that, I spotted Debbie immediately, waving to me from the wide opening to the high limit room. I didn't see Cindy with her, and that had me somewhat curious, so I waved for Debbie to come closer.

"Hello, Debbie, where's Cindy?" As soon as I asked her the question, I wished that I hadn't done so. She looked back at me with such a look of anguish that I just knew something terrible must have happened. It also looked like she was getting ready to fall apart emotionally any second now. I'd just won my last bet, so I quickly pulled back my next bet from the circle and turned back to Debbie. "C'mon, Deb, let's go over to the Diamond lounge and you can tell me all about it."

The Diamond lounge is a place where Diamond and Seven Star players can go to relax, have a drink, or a snack during those times when they want to take a little break from playing. You need to have the right player's card to get admitted, and each member is allowed to bring in one guest. After I had gotten my chips colored up, Debbie and I walked the short ways over to the lounge area behind us. It was literally only thirty steps away from where I'd been sitting. Once inside, I got myself a diet Pepsi, and a cup full of mixed salted nuts. Debbie got herself a cold drink as well, and a plate of Frito's and some potato chips. We went into one of the smaller, more private, TV lounges so we would have a quiet place to have our talk.

We took our seats, sitting side by side on two padded chairs. All the sound for the TV's had been turned off already, so it was pretty quiet in there, and we were alone in the room.

"After we got home from the Flamingo that last time, Cindy and I kept getting into arguments about her temper, the money we both lost, and that terrible scene she made when they arrested her. It got pretty ugly there for about another week, and then we stopped talking about it. I thought it was over with after that, but, a week ago, she just packed her things and moved out of our apartment. Just like that. No note, no phone calls or any warning at all. I found out, through some friends of ours, that Cindy had moved back to Santa Maria. She's living with her brother, Tom, and his wife. She quit her job without giving any notice too. Eight years we were together. It seems so stupid that she'd just decide to end everything over something so insignificant."

"Maybe it wasn't that insignificant to her? She seemed pretty firm in her beliefs to me. I didn't know her very well, but even I could tell that she didn't like it when people tried to argue with her about anything. My own wife is like that, except she doesn't quite have Cindy's temper, or her lack of self control. If she did have that, she'd soon end up being my ex wife. I'm sorry that you feel so bad about this, and I hope you'll manage to get over her soon."

I was anxious to get back to playing. To me, Debbie was just a nice woman I knew casually. I actually knew Cindy better than I knew her. I knew I wasn't the warmest most comforting person, but I did hope she started feeling better. As far as Cindy was concerned though, I thought Debbie would be better off without her.

What little I did know about Cindy made me think that she'd be a tough woman to have to be around for a long time. She seemed kind of angry at the world, and jealous of any good fortune someone other than herself might have had. Her temper alone would have scared me away from her though. Debbie seemed much calmer, more relaxed, and easy going. It was hard for me to imagine what she had seen in Cindy. I mean, Cindy was pretty good looking and all, but with that mouth she had on her, she certainly wouldn't have been good looking enough for me to overlook all the rest of it.

I got up to leave, having finished my drink and the cup half full with nuts. I really didn't have anything more to add to what I'd already told her, and she didn't seem to want to tell me anything more either. I left her there in the Diamond lounge, and went back to my Pai Gow table. It took me four more hours of play before I finally managed to double my starting money from the third tier. It had been somewhat nerve wracking for me, being on the next to the last tier like that. I had only come to Rincon because they had been offering seven to one bonus credits on Friday, and five to one on Saturday and Sunday.

When you played any casino games at Harrah's properties, using your Total Rewards card, you earned tier points and bonus points. The tier points determine your player's level, and the tier points and bonus points, added together, determined how many comp points a player earned. I used up a lot of comp points when I had the whole family in Las Vegas in the summer months, so I liked to earn them, and store them up, in the winter, so I'd have a lot saved for the summer months. It was nice to go to a buffet with about fourteen people and have them take the $250.00 or so bill directly from your comp point balance. Harrah's seemed okay with this too, because they wanted as many chances to win my gambling bankroll as they could get.

So far on this trip I had about seven hours averaging $100 a hand average bet, and now another eight hours at around $400 per hand. This was a good average for me, and I knew I'd earn plenty of comp dollars. It helped that I was back on my first tier again, and that I was enough ahead that I'd still be winning, even if I again lost my six straight bets at the first level. Playing with the casino's money is much better than playing when you are down, and it is all your own money you're risking.

I had visited the cashier's cage and now had all my chips converted back into money. I was going to head back up to my room for an hour or so of rest before going back to the tables in the regular casino and trying to earn more money again. I was walking by the bar, on the way to my elevator, when I spotted Debbie sitting alone at the bar.

Gambler's, by their very nature, are single minded, self absorbed individuals. It can't be helped, that's just the nature of the beast. When we're winning though, we tend to act more caring and civilized than we do when we're losing. I'd felt bad for Debbie earlier, but back then, I'd been playing on my third tier and had already had two very close calls with losing that one too. If I'd lost, I'd have been playing on my final tier for this trip.

Had I lost that one, I'd have been down more than $23,000.00. Worse than that though, I'd have only been three tier losses away from losing my entire gambling bankroll. It is very difficult for any self absorbed individual to show much caring or sympathy for anyone else when their own ass is out waving in the wind and cold.

Having recouped all my earlier losses, I was now feeling somewhat more sympathetic to Debbie's plight. I decided to sit with her, to buy her a drink or two, and help her try to come to terms with her loss. When I first sat down next to her, my heart was pure, my intentions honorable, and the furthest thing from my mind was doing anything to make either of our lives more complicated.

The two of us sat there, drinking and talking for several hours. I mostly listened to her as she poured out her pain and sorrow to me. The drinks made listening to all her troubles a lot easier for me. She did almost all the talking. All I did was offer a sympathetic ear. One of the last things I actually remember was her telling me she was going to try to drive home. She was in a lot worse shape than I was, and I was totally wrecked from all that drinking.

I had just assumed that she was staying at the hotel, like I was. She lived almost two hours away by car, and the first eleven miles of the drive home was over a one lane in each direction, winding, narrow, strip of road. I had to practically beg her not to try driving in the shape she was in.

I vaguely remember her and I sharing an elevator on the way up to my room. After that, I don't remember anything else, until eleven o'clock the next morning. I was awakened by Debbie's loud scream. One of the first things I noticed was one of her bare breasts, poking out through the covers. The next thing I noticed was the terrible taste in my mouth, my pounding head from sitting up so quickly, and the way my eyes were burning up. After that, I noticed I had no clothes on at all.

I'm an old man. Me, without any clothes on, is not a pretty sight. I've got so many little things growing on me that I don't even like to think about how it looks. In the past ten years or so, my back has been in a contest to see whether all the brown spots on it was going to completely cover the available surface area before the sudden profusion of back hair did it first. Like I said, not a pretty sight at all. I'm telling you all this to make you understand just how unlikely it would be that I'd wake up in a strange bed, with a strange woman, and both of us would be naked together.

There's one more thing I need to tell you too, and that is that I'm no longer capable of doing anything with a woman. Haven't been for several years now. Too many years of smoking, and of eating high cholesterol fatty foods. My veins and arteries are so clogged that the last time any blood got to my dick it was because I'd cut myself shaving, and a drop of blood had fallen and landed on the tip of it. That was a few years ago too. Being in bed with Debbie like that had made me glad that I was impotent. At least that was one thing I didn't have to worry about. I knew nothing had happened.

"How could you take advantage of me like this? You knew I didn't like men, and you went ahead and raped me after I passed out."

"Hold up a minute, Debbie. I'm not sure of too much right now, but I know damn well that I never raped you. I couldn't, not even if I wanted to, and I didn't. My dick doesn't work. I don't remember much, but if we'd done anything, I think I'd remember that."

Debbie threw off the rest of her covers and stood up alongside the bed. There was definitely some caked deposits on both of her thighs. I'd even have to admit these deposits certainly looked like it might be someone's jism. I knew it wasn't mine. I tried standing up too, I'm not sure why. When I finally managed it though, you wouldn't believe how surprised I was to find pecker tracks running down my own skinny legs, and other visual evidence that I'd recently been fucked. It's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack, and drop dead right there in the hotel room.

I'm an old man, and I'm a married old man. Married for over forty years. Most of that time I'd have to say I was happily married. We've had some differences, but none so bad that we weren't able, eventually, to work them out. One thing I'd always been proud of was that I'd never cheated on my wife. I'd had lots of chances, back when I was younger, but I'd never given in to any of those temptations. You can imagine my dismay after seeing this evidence that I had cheated on my wife. This was compounded by the fact that I didn't remember any of it, and that I would have really loved to have done that with my wife, instead of this woman I hardly knew, and who I certainly had no desire at all for.

"I'm calling the police and reporting you for what you did."

"Go right ahead. I'll tell them what happened, and it will be your word against mine, and whoever else saw us leaving that bar this morning. This is my room we're in now, and you're too damn big for me to have hit you on the head and dragged you in here. If anyone was raped, it was me. I hope you don't have any diseases. Christ, what am I going to do now? She's going to kill me."

"Your wife?"

"Of course my wife. This will be the end of us too. Forty two years we've been married, forty two years. You know how many times I've stepped out on her, in all that time? Never, not once. Not until now. She's going to be so devastated. She always told me I wasn't much, but at least she could always trust me. A lot of our friends, over the years, they had trouble with that, but not us. Forty two years. I can't believe it. I never even thought it would be possible."