a disappearance in a casino

We're searching for each other in a casino with nice windows after he's finished with the Keno and I with the buffet. You don't often see windows in a casino, even these middle of nowhere tribal jobs. He said he was going to play the video poker, but all I see are slot machines. Everyone's smoking, but the air is the cleanest air ever, shining and super-oxygenated. Still, I can't find him.

A casino is much like a factory, like a toy factory making the biggest brightest animatronic wonder the world has witnessed. One after another, the slot games roll past like marvels paused on an assembly belt, jingling and twinkling. Like million dollar debutantes, they all start to look the same. They're not meant to be lined up together. Each is so ripe and fearsomely adorned that, taken as a group, they're just so many unwinnable fairy tales.

The only people who seem happy are the little old ladies. The women especially, the younger they are, the more they look like they're out of time. I don't talk to them - I keep to myself. I can only wonder who they are, how there are so many of them who've driven 50 miles from the nearest freeway, dolled up but dreary in J Crew and Chanel No. 5.

I sit in the lounge to wait.

The bartender is a mountain of a woman with some sort of glitter stuff in her frizzly blond hair-cloud. She refers to me as "Honey". Everyone in the casino calls me "Honey", although I'm pushing thirty and have two kids. All the world is a truck stop and I am just one more empty mug to be filled with greasy coffee and the cheap affectation of affection. Maybe it's just that I'm short.

Her name tag says Kimberly, but she doesn't look like one. Sometimes I wonder if people who have to wear name tags assume names, or share names, like phone sex girls. "Kimberly? This is Kimberly? Do you have a cold?" Or maybe phone sex girls don't do that. I would. After all, it's not you they're calling for, is it? It's the Kimberly you pretend to be, the one who blinks out of existance when you go home and make a meatloaf and put your feet up. Shouldn't the swing shift take over for Kimberly, so Kimberly is always there when the customer needs her and the customer doesn't have to reintroduce himself and explain his diaper fetish to Miranda or Pam or Brianna?

Kimberly and her thunderhead hairdo waddle off after my Whiskey Daisy. If we were in an ordinary bar, it would be empty now (2pm on Thursday), but there are no time zones here, no happy hours and no last calls. People aren't even necessarily drinking. A gang of boys is sprawled across the corner booth, drinking Mountain Dew and waiting on some hundred dollar poker tournament where they'll showboat for each other, pretending to be the guys in sunglasses on TV.

The bar feels like a wake, so quiet and clean. So serious.

In one booth, a woman is staring at her cell phone, which is sitting on the table in front of her. It lights up and does a whirring dance around the table, drawing tracks in the pooled condensation from her drink. She doesn't answer it, and she doesn't turn it off. Her drink is finished, but she sits there and stares.

I check my own cell, but he hasn't called. I hate him for taking so long, but I'm so happy. I don't want to get into the car and drive back to the base, outside where it's cold and grey and the roads are banked with the trash of a week-old Christmas. I don't want to sit next to him for that long. If I could forget how much he annoys me for five minutes, I could miss him.

From nowhere, there's a man over my shoulder. He's a sort of collapsed looking old Indian. If you stretched him until the wrinkles fell out of his face and the hunch from his back, he would look at home on the cover of a romance novel. But he's just an old guy in a golfing shirt and Wranglers, and I can hardly deny him a seat.

"Well, thank you very much, Honey." He says, motioning to Kimberly. "It hasn't really been my day. Wasn't relishing the thought of drinking alone."

I shrug, graciously, I hope. I don't want to be rude, but neither do I feel up for small talk.

"How about you, Honey? How's your luck been?"

"I don't gamble."

"No? Hmm. Well I guess that's pretty smart."

Again, I just shrug.

"So whatcha doing in the casino not gambling? You work here?"

I almost say something to the effect of white people aren't allowed to work in the casino, but I think of Kimberly and realize I don't know what I'm talking about. "No, I don't work here. I'm just waiting for my husband."

He gets an odd look. Resigned. "Been waiting long?"

"I don't know. About half an hour, I guess. That's when his Keno game ended. But if he won..."

"One of those."

"Yeah."

We sip our drinks, but not at the same time. We alternate. The monumental bigscreen is playing some football game and we both pretend to be absorbed as they stutter along, pausing every few seconds for some tumbling and flag-waving.

The old Indian guy removes a roll of mints from his pocket and holds them out to me.

I hate to be rude. I say thanks, take one off the roll, and pop it into my mouth. It's attached to a bit of pocket-lint, which I pick off of my tongue. It tastes medicinal. When I first quit smoking, I carried all sorts of candy to snack on when the urge for a cigarette hit me, but the doctor said that wasn't helping my weight any. I've gotten used to the taste of sugar free, but I haven't seen any difference in my weight.

He takes one, lint and all, and sucks on it. Maybe he's thinking what I'm thinking, that bourbon and sugar free mint complement each other in a way that's nice without being especially tasty.

I check the time display on my phone. He's 45 minutes overdue. I slurp the last of my drink and leave Kimberly a five tucked under the coaster.

"Gonna go find your old man?"

I nod.

What's in his eyes looks like pity. "Well, thanks for the company, Honey." He turns back to the game, which is either over or very badly stalled.

Stepping out of the relative quiet of the lounge, the casino is like some frozen Mardi Gras, paused mid explosion. The jubilant ringing of slot machines paying out hangs unappreciated in the air, confetti caught in time and fading. Most of the ringing is for payouts of 5 or 10 cents. The gamblers keep their heads down and keep playing, paper mache gargoyles all wearing the same black leather jacket.

I wander up and down the aisles of machines, wondering if they make a clever pattern when you see them from above. I still have yet to find the video poker, though I do find electronic Keno. I stop and watch one lonely card table with a low bid game going. All the players are retirees, or look it. The dealer is the only one who speaks.