Kate wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting in this spot. The clangs and whistles of the machine transported her to a familiar hypnotic trance. Her right arm reached for the button as easily as breathing. She watched the numbers roll, not aware of whether she won or loss. When the light dimmed and the rolls ceased, she took her last $20 and slid it into the machine’s mouth. “This is the last one,” she muttered aloud as if trying to convince herself, and the machine, that she had some measure of control.
At that moment an elderly gentleman sat next to her. “I’ve said that before,” he said as he swiveled his chair to face her. “Particularly that machine, it’s a thief.” The woman turned and looked at the gentleman, neatly dressed, a tweed sports jacket, cashmere turtleneck, woolen slacks and designer leather shoes. She suddenly was aware of her own dress, a coffee-stained polyester sweatpants and sweatshirt. She grunted at him. What did he know about financial problems? She turned back to the machine for the next spin, but he persisted. “How much has he taken from you, that bastard? You’re a nice woman, why don’t you go home, use your money to pay off your debts?”
The woman hit the spin button again, trying to block out his smooth voice piercing through her stupor. What money? She was completely broke. She wanted to respond, to tell him to mind his own business, but suddenly he was gone. She hit the spin button again and watched the numbers rolling past her eyeballs until the face, his face, three of them stared back at her from the pay line. Bells and whistles filled the room, everyone looked at her. The numbers began clicking upward, stopping at $20,000. She sat in disbelief. Maybe she could go home now, pay off her credit card. She cashed out her winnings.
As she walked away, she saw the gentleman take a seat next to another woman.
Marcia Szymanski is a poet and fiction writer from Massachusetts. One of her short-short stories was published in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. Her poems have been published in The Berkshire Review, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal and Verdad Magazine.
