Gamble of a Lifetime

Sensitive content warning: suicide

Lauren was a 38-year-old woman who had labored for eight years at an insurance company in Los Angeles and one day just walked away and drove to Las Vegas. She’d resolved that, once her cash was gone, she would commit suicide. Such was her mood as she sat at the bar of the Fremont Hotel-Casino when she spotted Douglas Calloway from Rhode Island. 

He'd thought he could make a living counting cards. In less than eight hours he’d lost almost all of his $650 bankroll.

He noticed Lauren noticing him. He was scared stiff, because somehow, he knew his reality was about to greatly usurp his fantasy. As for Lauren, she had never thought to have sex with a stranger in a bar. Just once before I die, she thought. Why not? She was on her fourth rum and coke.

“My name’s Lauren.”

“Hello Lauren, Douglas.”

“This is my first time in Las Vegas. You look like you know your way around town. Would you like to show me?”

He gulped, frozen silent.

“We could start in my hotel room.”

Afterwards, they were both a little embarrassed, but more so hungry. “Want to hit the buffet with me?” Douglas asked.

“Not really,” she said, “How about I take you to a nice restaurant instead? My treat.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because I’m going to kill myself soon, Douglas, and I might need your help.”

Later, at dinner, Douglas confessed, “Sure, I’ve thought about it, too. But I guess I’d just come to think feeling depressed was normal,” he told her, “Even the right, or better, way to be because you weren’t kidding yourself with all the nonsense of church, school, parents, holidays, having kids, a college, a career.”

“Oh, somebody’s been reading the existentialists,” she quipped as her lobster arrived. “It’s a phase of youth, Douglas, I went through it when I went to college, lots of young people do.”

“So, you were kidding about killing yourself, though?”

“No, I wasn’t. Yes, I outgrew my existentialist phase, but not the depression. I’ve tried everything; therapy, meds, sweat lodges, meditation, electro-feedback, even Scientology for a little while if you can believe that. But that last Wednesday afternoon after lunch I knew I had to get the hell out of that building or I would start hurting other people and I didn’t want to do that! So, I got in the car and started driving. My cokehead husband won’t care, we never had children, my parents have both passed away, I’m an only child, never joined a church or book club or bowling league or anything. I have no close friends at work; in fact right now, you’re my best friend in the world. If you did it, how would you do it?”

“As easily as possible,” he said, nervously, “but I don’t know enough about pills or where to get them.”

“Well, that’s where I may be able to help us both,” she said, “I squirreled away a bunch of pills for myself for when the time is right. Let’s both eat a bunch with alcohol and then have sex while we wait for them to kick in. We’ll go out together in the middle of it, wouldn’t it be great? And don’t say have sex first because we might change our minds.”

“Lauren, after that first time together with you my mind has been changed! If there’s even a chance of experiencing that again I want to stick around and wait for it!”

“Well, thank you, but how shallow! Orgasm shmorgasm, they’re over and then what? The world and life still suck!”

“Hmm. Ok, how’s this sound, we drive out to some out of the way little motel in the desert, some real small town, you know, then we have sex in the motel room, then we start walking into the desert.”

“Why are we walking into the desert?”

“Well, maybe we won’t need the pills, maybe we’ll just slowly dehydrate, starve, sunstroke, rattlesnake bite…”

“Show a girl a good time, why don’t you?”

“I’ve read a lot of Native American vision quest stuff.”

She dabbed her mouth with her napkin and said, “You can go out on your vision quest. I am staying comfortably in my room and taking my pills. But I have to lose all the money I have first. I don’t want my deadbeat husband to get it. I’d give it to you but you’re committing suicide with me, right? I mean you don’t have to, of course. But if you don’t help me, I’m not having sex with you again. You’re not going to talk me out of it.”

“But, Lauren, you’re–”

“I said, you’re not going to talk me out of it!”

“Ok. I believe people should have free will.”

“Do you think I could still talk you into it?”

Douglas paused somberly and looked down at the chicken parmigiana dinner Lauren was paying for, his favorite.

“I don’t think so. Yes, I was wicked depressed at the thought that I would lose all my little bit of money and have to call my mother to pay my way home and then go back to work for my father’s company doing something I hated 40 hours a week, but then you happened and even now, hours later, it’s like I’m still in some dream world, a world where I’m not depressed, where I’m actually happy, where I have a girlfriend and maybe even a job I like and place to live where winter isn’t such a pain in the ass but then you insist you’re going to kill yourself and that means this sweet little bubble will burst and I’ll be right back where I started, or worse!”

She looked back at him and he saw the face of his mother, his first grade teacher that really liked him and always complimented him, and even all the girls in high school he was always too afraid to talk to even though when they looked at him it was almost like they were saying, don’t be afraid, we’re just people, we can be friends, yes this high school drama is kind of pathetic when you can see  through it all but it’s not worth killing yourself over!

Lauren took a sip of wine and said, “Douglas, if you were in a concentration camp would you have fought to survive? It’s one thing to kill yourself in a fairly comfortable situation but what if you’re suffering intensely? I may not look like it to you but inside I am suffering intensely! All I’m really asking of you is to stay with me through this. Do it as a friend?”

After finishing dinner, they went back to the casino. Lauren bought $4,000 in chips. 

“I’m holding back some cash in case I have to buy more drugs,” she said, and then put all $4,000 on her age—number 38. The dealer had to get permission from the pit boss to take the bet. If it came in, it would pay $144,000.

The ball spun in the wheel. The other people around the table watching were no doubt hoping she’d win, the dealer and pit boss confident she’d lose, despite knowing even the 36-1 odds were beatable.

And then the small metal ball dropped into the slot marked number 38.

Excited cheers swept the table and through the crowd standing around behind it. Lauren and Douglas just looked at each other like they’d gotten the news of a close friend or relative’s accidental death. Shock, the inability to process the truth of a moment.

At the payoff window she filled out an IRS form. Security escorted them to their room.

Once inside, she dropped the packets of cash on the bed and exclaimed, “Well that’s just great! Now what?”

“Have you changed your mind?” Douglas asked.

She looked at him angrily and then started undressing, saying, “No, I haven’t!”

“But…”

“But nothing! It could be $144 million, Douglas, I’m still depressed! I ought to have just swerved my car into an oncoming semi-truck when I was driving here.” She got in bed and under the covers, saying, “I’m going to sleep. Go do whatever you want.”

Douglas stood there dumbfounded. Cash had dropped from the bed when she got in, more cash than he had ever seen in his life. 

Then Lauren turned to him and said to him, as if they’d been married for years, “Well? Are you coming to bed or not?”

He undressed and got into bed, saying, “I remember reading somewhere that if you kill yourself, you’re guaranteed to reincarnate.”

“Oh Douglas, nobody knows for sure if reincarnation is real, and also, I don’t care if I come back as a ditch digger, I can’t stand the depression of this life anymore.”

He stroked her forehead and said, “Please don’t do it, Lauren. You could get such great help with that much money and— “

“I told you, I tried everything!”

She turned her head away from him and said, “It’s your fault. You’re the one thing I haven’t tried. I can see us together, for a while, but you’ll likely waste your youth on gambling, drugs, alcohol, get tired of me and want someone younger.”

She turned back to him and said, “Be honest! Wouldn’t you? I’m frickin’ 38 years old, old enough to be your mother!”

“Raymond Chandler’s wife was eighteen years older than him and they lived happily together for thirty years!”

“Who the hell is Raymond Chandler?”

“He wrote The Maltese Falcon, and other novels. I would like to be a writer. I’ve been writing for four or five years already.”

“Really? Read me something. Do you have it with you?’

“Yes. But I don’t want to…”

“Read it to me,” she said sharply, sitting up in bed, “and if I like it, I won’t kill myself. If I don’t, I’ll give you the $144K before I overdose. Talk about a win-win!”

He slowly went over to his backpack and took out a folder.

“It’s called the earth casino,” he said, and began reading.

“Las Vegas is a miniature of the earth casino. Before you reincarnate on earth, you accept the fact that it’s a casino and you might win or you might lose. The problem is, when we’re in the casino we get dazzled by the lights and the smells and everything, we get hooked on sensations.”

“I thought you were a Buddhist,” she interrupted. “I’m sorry, go on.”

“So, being born is sitting down at the blackjack table. The dealer starts dealing. By now you’re 4 or 5 years old. The first hands come out: school, then before you know it, adolescence, and now he’s really dealing fast, you’re feeling the pressure, hit or stand, hit or stand, and then more time goes by, more cards get dealt, all you can do is play them, and you start to get so tired, you don’t care if you win or lose. You start losing so much for so long at whatever game you try, suicide starts to look good because maybe at the next casino incarnation you’ll get luckier!”

“Is this talking me out of it?” she said, smiling more than he’d yet seen her smile. “Again, sorry, please go on.”

“Walking through a casino the first time I was struck by how much it resembled a gauntlet of the sort Native American tribes would force prisoners to traverse, beating and clubbing them along the way. The vibrations of all these people seemingly chained to the slot machines, flashing light and ringing bell robot masters sucking them dry, assaulted me relentlessly. I knew at once how everybody gambling in the casino accepted the premise that they could lose. However positive they thought or methodically they played a system or fervently prayed for good luck, they all accepted without question that there was a chance, usually a really good chance, that they were going to lose!

“It seemed similar to how people accept the premise that not only is death inevitable, but it represents the ultimate extinguishment of any and all endeavor, and as long as that fear exists, there is ultimately no really good and satisfying answer as to why to try to do anything in life. Oh sure, people run around and do all sorts of things, usually have children as a means of feeling they will live on through them, but they’re all still just gambling in the earth casino in some manner or another. 

“They all accept to one degree or another that death, the house, is going to win in the end. But what if you walked into the earth casino knowing you can’t lose, because you can’t die! You just forget you can’t lose or die in order to make the games more interesting. I mean, who would want to always know every number that comes up on roulette? The fun is in the pretending that there is an alternative, when really there isn’t one at all!”

He stopped reading and looked at her. He saw a flash of her as an elegant, serene visage but dead, lying in a coffin, and then just as quickly, as a young girl, playing, happily, utterly carefree on a sunny playground with other children. And then she just closed her eyes. Douglas panicked, thinking maybe she’d taken the pill overdose already when he wasn’t looking. But then he lay down beside her and heard and felt her breathing so calmly and rhythmically – and peacefully. 

He dozed off as well, his manuscript papers spilled on the bed with the cash.

At some point in the middle of the night, not able to tell if he were awake or dreaming, he saw Lauren sitting up in bed, talking rapidly, almost manically.

“You’ve triggered something in me that will help me decide once and for all about life or death! It’s like that feeling just before you sneeze. You know it’s coming but you feel frozen in anticipation, unable to do or think about anything else. But you haven’t actually sneezed! 

“We can’t lose and we can’t die? Is the only answer not caring about whatever happens? I mean it goes against every pattern of logic; live or die, how can you not care about that?

“I remember something from Catholic school for the brief time I was there, St. Paul saying, I die daily. What, or who, dies daily? Attitudes, opinions, I mean, just like you put on different clothes every morning? If I’m free to put on different clothes in the morning I must be free to put on a different state of consciousness every morning?

“I mean can it really be possible to wake up feeling depressed and just decide you’re not, really? This must go way back to the time of people feeling gods truly controlled their lives, and to step out of line meant being struck down by a thunderbolt. 

“It’s like going off script, you know, when “the gods,” or whatever, want to forever trick you into thinking you have no choice but to follow the script. Fear. What am I if I am not the script? Only by dropping the script completely is there a glimpse of what’s beyond the script, and I bet, no pun, it’s great!

“I really don’t want to die; I just want to live my true beingness! I’ve known moments of that, only moments that are so brief, and then the pain returns with the hopelessness that that is all they will ever be— fireflies in an endless night. 

“Ok let’s just say it’s over for us; we’ve torn up the script and thrown it away forever! And we’re not gambling in the casino anymore! The only real way to beat the dealer is to become the dealer, and then close down the table and the whole damn casino for that matter! Douglas! Wake up! Have you been listening?”

He saw her there sitting up in bed, so beautiful even in the neon lights garishly coming in the window. He was paralyzed, unable to speak or move. She looked to be pondering deeply, like a person on a ledge that rescue workers were trying to talk down.  Frozen with conflict. Am I awake or dreaming? Am I alive or dead? 

The neon gave way to desert sun. It was morning and he was awake and moving and touching her cold, still, lifeless skin. She had evidently taken the rest of the pills during the night. She had left a note:

“Douglas, I’m sorry, I had to do it. I knew you were going to try to stop me. I slipped you something when you weren’t looking to make sure you slept through it. Now, take the money. You gave me everything I needed to leave with love. But you go on, please. Study, write, travel, have romances. Thank you and goodbye, Lauren.”

After the police investigation was concluded, Douglas eventually began gambling with Lauren’s money. He won. He won so much he was soon barred from all the casinos in Las Vegas. He was glad. He would never gamble again, not in Las Vegas or anywhere else. The knowledge that there was no death was so much more valuable than money. But the $3.2 million would certainly help. He bought a house in a nice local neighborhood, a new Subaru, and started taking classes at UNLV, planning to major in philosophy and religious studies. He flew his parents out to visit. 

“But if you don’t gamble, why in the world live here?” his mother asked. He just smiled.

“To really learn about what it means to win and lose. Oh, and the great buffets!”

About David Clear: "I am a New England writer; plainly a hobbyist rather than a professional. I had no formal writing education, but many great writing teachers, from office jobs to heartbroken relationships, and even convenience store clerks. I am retired, and I guess still seeking my great writing whale. My only previous publication I can lay claim to is my self-published novel, Dreaming at the Speed of Sound.”

Read more like this: