Chapter 2

I probably should have stayed with Sam. I know he loved me but he wanted more. He owned a small house in Oak Park, a little town close to Nashville and we stayed there a few times when the truck was in for repairs. The last time we were there he said that we should buy a bigger house together. I would get off the pill and start raising babies.

But with Sam nearly fifty and me only nineteen it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Not only that, but being with only Sam was getting old and so was all the driving. I wanted something different and it all came to a head in Las Vegas.

It was a Wednesday. The truck needed a service that was going to take a few days, so we got a room at a casino.

Thursday evening we were in a restaurant about to have dinner when the house magician came to our table. She was an older woman and she started doing card tricks for us. One of the tricks required someone else to shuffle and she handed the cards to me.

One of the guys mom dated was an amateur magician. He was around for a while and whenever he came by he would show me a card trick and teach me how to do it. One trick he taught me was a one-handed cut/shuffle. It was hard to learn but really impressive when it’s done right. I used to practice it a lot and I could do it quiet well.

When I did it for her she smiled and asked me to do it again. I did and she asked me what else I knew so I showed her a few more and she showed me a couple.

Just then our dinner showed up, so Sam tipped her and she left.

A little later Sam got up to use the rest room and she came by and asked, “You working?”

I knew what she meant; I was young and Sam was old. She was asking if I was a hooker.

“No, he’s my boyfriend.”

“Do you live around here?”

“What’s with the questions?”

“Las Vegas is always looking for dealers, especially good looking women. You’re pretty and you look good handling cards.”

“Sorry, I’m only nineteen. I think you have to be twenty one.”

“There are ways around that. What do you and your boyfriend do?”

“We’re long haul truckers.”

“What about you, would you like a change?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“People come to Vegas all the time looking for work. Every month or so, we select a few and we train them to fill the spots where they’re needed. I think we have a special spot for you.”

“What kind of spot?”

“We’ll talk about that if you decide to join us. I think you’ll like it.”

“But I don’t have a place to stay or any kind of transportation.”

“That’s not a problem. She picked up a napkin, wrote something on it and handed it to me. Then she said, “My name is Sally, let me know if you’re interested”.

She was leaving just as Sam returned.

He asked, “What was that about?”

“It was a job offer.”

“Doing what?”

“She said she could get me a job as a card dealer.”

He surprised me by saying, “You going to take it?”

Shocked, I asked, “Why, are you getting tired of me?”

“No, but I think you’re getting tired of me.”

“I’m not tired of you, it’s just that...” He held his hand up to stop me, sighed and continued, “I know, I’ve seen the way you’ve been lately. You’re nineteen and I’m not, so if you want to move on or try something different, I’ll understand.”

I was excited. I told Sam about what Sally had said and when the waitress came to check on us we asked her about Sally. She said that she was great and that a lot of people in the hotel and casino owed their jobs to her for recruiting them.

We walked around the hotel and checked with some others. No matter who we talked too; they had glowing things to say about Sally. So Sam called her and the next day she met us for lunch.

She explained to us, “I’m part of an enlistment program that’s sponsored by the Businesses in Las Vegas. I told Kim yesterday how young people, especially girls come here from all over the world to be a part of the glamour of Las Vegas. They come looking for jobs because they hear they can make a lot of money. Well, they can, our girls do very well. The tall, pretty ones like Kim usually want to be showgirls, but we have plenty of those and boxes full of resumes of girls who have dancing and singing backgrounds. What we need are girls who we call the ‘face of Las Vegas’. Young, pretty girls like Kim who can do the thousands of jobs that a place like Las Vegas requires.”

Sam raised an eyebrow and asked, “Do any of those jobs require that Kim be on her back?”

“Not unless she wants to. As I’m sure you know; prostitution is legal in Nevada. I don’t handle those requests but if she wants to, I can send her to someone who does.”

Sam answered, “No, I was just checking.”

She continued, “I understand. No, what I want for Kim is something special.”

She looked at me and said, ‘You have a great body. You’re tall and have broad shoulders. Are those muscles real?”

Surprised, I said, “Uhh, yeah.”

“Have you ever had to use force to keep someone in line?”

“Why, are you looking for a bouncer?”

She smiled, “No, we’re looking for someone with your card skills that I can put on a casino floor. Someone who can keep their eye on things, someone who can occasionally step in as a dealer and won’t let other dealers intimidate or try to disrespect them”.

“But I don’t know how to be a dealer. And besides, I’d be a rookie. How could I get people to respect me?”

“I’m going to send you to school. Its full time, it takes a month and by the time you leave you’ll know what to do, how to do it and how to treat the people around you.”

“That can all happen in a month?”

“You bet it can. It’s tough, its 24-7 and when you finish you’ll know everything you need to know about working in a casino. So when you get back here and step onto the floor, the people working there will know that you’ve been trained, and the customers will think you’ve been doing it for years.”

“What do you mean ‘back here’, where is the school?”

“It’s just outside of a town called Bailey, about an hour from Denver.”

“The school is near Denver? That’s kind of far from Las Vegas, Isn’t it? And isn’t it expensive?”

“Not to you it isn’t, they actually pay you to be there.”

“How can they afford it?”

“It’s an investment. Once you’re trained and placed somewhere, you’re going to have the ability to make both you and the house a lot of money.”

“Will there be a job available once I graduate?”

“There definitely will! Not only here, but there are over fifteen hundred Casinos in America and with your training you’ll be welcome in any of them. If, for instance you don’t like Las Vegas, there are over 130 just in California.

“What if I want to go back east?”

“If there’s a casino around, you’ll be qualified to work there. The place we send you is called, “The Hill”. It’s a school that trains people for casinos anywhere in America including the US Virgin Islands and when people come out of there they know what to do. Many dealers and almost every pit-boss working at the bigger casinos in Las Vegas have been there.”

“So the place is well-known?”

“Yes and no. It’s known inside the industry but hardly anywhere else. It’s in the mountains outside of Bailey. We fly you there, a Bus will take you to the “Hill” and you stay there for a month. The training is very intensive but you’ll leave there knowing everything you need to know for what could be an adventure of a lifetime.”

“That almost sounds like you’re in jail.”

She laughed, “It’s not that bad. You’re there to study but you can go into town if you need to. They just ask that you not talk about what you’re doing there. At the end of two weeks you get a whole day off to just look around. Bailey is in the Colorado foothills. The Platt River is close and so are lots of canyons. The school is above it at 8000 feet and sunsets can be spectacular.”

“So you’ve been there?”

“Many times; I love it there.”

“When does the next class start?”

“A new class starts every other month. You’re lucky; the next class starts next Monday. If you decide to come, be at the parking lot behind the casino Sunday morning and a bus will take you to the airport. The bus leaves at twelve, so get there around eleven-thirty.”

I looked at Sam and said, “I think I’d like to do it.”

He looked down and said, “I know.”

Sally looked at us for a minute, then she said, “Its Friday, you have a couple days to make up your mind. If you decide to join us just pack an overnight bag, everything else is provided. For the rest of your things, call the concierge desk here at the hotel and ask for Dell. He’ll store your stuff until you get back. Now go and spend the next couple nights with Sam. He seems like a good guy and if you decide to go you’ll both need to say goodbye.”

After she left, both of us sat there thinking about what she’d said. I wanted to talk to Sam about how excited I was and about what was sure to be a great adventure, but whenever I glanced at him I could see how hurt he was, so we sat quietly until he stood up and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

Las Vegas has a lot to see and we walked from one casino to another, holding hands and sometimes stopping to put a quarter or two in a slot machine, but never talking about what was on both of our minds.

We had dinner in a nice restaurant and as we were leaving, the waiter mentioned there was a great show in the lounge tonight, so we went there and watched some people who were made-up to look like famous singers. Two of them were so good I thought they sounded better than the real ones.

It was almost midnight when we got to bed. We started to make love, but both of us decided that we weren’t really into it, and ended up just holding each other.

Sam got up around nine o’clock and was trying to get the coffee maker in the room to work, when his cell phone rang.

He talked for a couple minutes then he clicked off and said, “It’s the truck place. The service is complete and if we want it today we have to pick it up before five because they’re closed Sundays.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

“That depends on you. If you’re gonna leave tomorrow, I’ll call dispatch and see if I can get a load somewhere.”

This was it. It was decision time and I was staring at Sam, trying to think of a way to tell him how much I’d miss him. I guess I took too long because he just nodded, opened his phone and called dispatch.

He talked for a minute then he closed his phone and said, “I got a pickup tomorrow in Laughlin.”

“Where’s it going?”

“It’s going to Salt Lake City for a Wednesday drop-off.”

I did a quick calculation in my head and said, “It’s about a hundred miles from here to Laughlin and around a thousand from there to Salt Lake, so you should have plenty of time and I bet they’ll have plenty for you there.”

He smiled, “You are really good at that. Are you gonna miss doing it?”

“No, but I’m gonna miss you.”

His smile was gone when he said, “Yeah babe, I’m gonna miss you too.”

We spent the rest of the day taking care of last minute things. Sam called the Truck place. They sent someone to pick him up and he brought it back and parked it in the lot behind the casino. When he got there he called me, so I went outside, got all my stuff from the truck and brought it to our room.

When I left home three years ago I had everything I owned in a duffle bag and I hadn’t gathered much since then. When you’re in a truck and you’re on the road all the time, space can be a problem, so the few things I’d picked up, like my one dress, my one pair of nice shoes and some seasonal clothes, we kept at Sam’s house and got them when we needed them.

I was thinking about what to do about that, when Sam said, “Let me know when you find out where you’re gonna end up and I’ll send your stuff to you.”