A Battle Through the Midday Sun

There's a feeling you get, when everything feels like its going alright, when you get into that groove. Some people call that feeling flow, now that's a perfectly good word for it but I don't like to put labels on my feelings, it makes them feel more personal, more like its something that only I've ever felt. Dear god, I hope that I'm the only person thats ever felt the feeling I just felt. Its the exact opposite feeling of flow, its the feeling you get where everything you worked so hard for, everything that you feel, no you know you deserve gets ripped away in mere moments. It's a feeling of failure and abject humiliation.

All of this flooded my mind in the half a second it took for the glass I'd just span around and looked away from to be pushed from its perch on the table to the floor. And whilst all of those feelings are terrible and long-lasting, and even when you think about it and get to the bottom of what you truly feel, nothing during the crescendo of horror leading up to it really prepares you for the apex of annoyance, the smash.

The sound wasn't as loud as I was anticipating, it didn't echo, it didn't produce that sound of water afterward, it was just a short little clink, and it was equally as horrifying as a dam bursting above you.

I gave a deep, audible sigh as I dropped to my knees and pulled my mop bucket closer to me, my muscles gave an unpleasant unclenching, not the one of satisfaction that I was hoping for, but rather one of renunciation of my night, knowing that I was going to get chewed out by my boss. This was the one damn job I could get on this godforsaken 'island paradise,' and even then I screwed it up.

Reaching into the compartment on the side of the mop bucket that housed the dustpan and brush, I carefully began to scrape the shard of glass into the receptacle, reaching for one of the larger ones, a sound slipped into my periphery. The sound of slightly faster approaching footsteps, and once again any semblance of flow that I'd had was ripped away, once more replaced with shame and self loathing.

"Did you F*cking shatter a glass again A*shole?" "I'm so, so sorry Mr. Koblenz." "You understand this room is booked in 15 minutes right? And and and and look," He said, stuttering in his impotent rage. "You didn't even fill the chocolate fountain right, it needs to have dark chocolate with streams of milk chocolate, not the other damn way around! God- jus- Just fix it up Marcello, if you get it done in 15 minutes I might, might, not dock your f*ckin' pay."

He slammed the door, shaking the base of the stack of champagne glasses carefully stacked in the centre of the table. Looking back down at my hand I noticed a cut under my thumb on my palm, probably from glass. I looked back to the table and saw that I had used up every extra glass that I had on the tower. sighing once again, and once again letting my muscles untense this time in resignation I looked over to the case of glasses on my right. I decided then and there that I didn't care, I wanted to see my wife and I wanted some dignity, I didn't want to be an indentured servant.

I grabbed a glass from the case, placed it on the table, filled it with champagne, well, champagne is a bit generous, generic sparkling wine might be more truthful, and rearranged the glasses in the cabinet so that the row that I took a glass from was once more centered. All in all, it looked quite natural. From there, I wheeled my cleaner's cart and the cart that had contained the glasses out of the room and began the trek back to storage.

Walking through these halls, luxurious and filled with the western setting sun though they may have been, made me sick. It filled me with a disgust of the excess that lay around every corner of this hotel. Not only in the decoration and the food, but in the personalities of just about everyone who worked, stayed, or even just came into here. Both in there hate and lack of compassion and in their unadulterated greed.

Pushing through the door marked "Employés" I walked out of the faux-Edwardian wooden halls and into a bland, concrete room. Instead of the far off music of a piano in the main hall I heard that all to familiar buzz of the lights. The room was by no means pleasant, but it was cooler and more isolated than the rest of the hotel. I leant my head against the wall and reached into my back pocket. Swiveling around, my back now against the wall. I slid down, my knees now to my head and began to open my cigarette case.

My cigarettes were long since exhausted, usually pilfered by whatever manager saw me with one and thrown onto the ground, but in my case my most prized possession still lay, the only photo I had left of my wife. Even now I kicked myself, why hadn't I taken another one? I dreaded losing it, god, my darkest fears were that I'd forget her face. But that was a fallacy. Her face, even if it wasn't etched into every crevice of my mind was unforgettable, her lips, naturally rosy, her eyes a piercing green, and her nose, there was just something about it, you couldn't place it, but it was just noticeable.

Smirking to myself for a second, I closed my half opened cigarette case and slid back up the wall, fixing my waistcoat. I strode back out the door and looked at the grandfather clock down the hall from me. 6:53. I had another 5 or so hours before I got off. I stopped for a second staring to my right out of the window that stared out into the ocean, the setting sun that had once seemed so beautiful but now haunted every day almost blinding me. Quickly I looked back ahead and readied myself.

I strode quickly through the halls, stopping occasionally to fix a fruit bowl that was slightly off centre or shut a drawer on an end table that had been left ajar, until I reached the office. I looked at the huge chalkboard that took up most of the wall, lining my finger up with the column that said my name fingering down to the column labelled 7:00. My finger stopped. "Casino Duty." I read to myself. The rest of the boxes all the way down were filled with singular lines, I was working 5 hours in the casino.

"Hey tough luck there buddy." I felt a slap on my back. It was Tino, a guy who I knew almost nothing about other than the fact that he did something with the air conditioning and that he was generally friendly. He was talking in his normal and recognizable fast and evenly spaced out manner, essentially the only reason I could tell you his name. "Hey, if the ringing in your ears isn't going away remember to keep a window open." I looked at him blankly. "Makes it easier to sleep." "thanks Tino." "Uh huh."

Leaving the office, I opened the grand doors into the entry stairwell, the sun, once more almost blinding me through the grand window above the main doors. Jogging down the stairs, the sound of the casino's bells and whistles, both literally and figuratively, fell into earshot.

Walking onto the carpeted floor I was hit by the same smell of cigarettes and alcohol that the casino floor was always filled with. Walking forward I was intercepted. The pit boss, a tall and broad man named Ramsey blocked me and grabbed my shoulder. He gazed around and sniffed before, in his guttural accent asking me. "Oi, you're the new bloke right, go over there, with Carlo and the geezer in the suit, he thinks a manager is coming down. It's your job to play into that and back up absolutely everything Carlo says, a'right mate?" I nodded back in affirmation and turned away, hearing him clear his throat one last time, I turned back around. "Oh, and put this on." he said, pulling a rack of coats with a shiny red waistcoat with a golden badge spelling out manager on it.

"Hey, Carlo, you called?" I said out, confident in my ability to portray the role of some higher up. "Oh, uh yeah, this guy says he's a mathematician-" "Statistician." "Yeah, uh, a statistician, and he said he wants to talk to someone about the payouts on the machines." "They don't add up." The statistician said, putting his hands on his hips." "Yes, that is generally how casinos operate sir." Carlo said back. "He's ri-" I attempted to back up Carlo but was interrupted. "Oh, I know, 'The House Always Wins' and whatnot, but if you weren't careful and I wasn't such a gentleman, perhaps that wouldn't be the case. You see-" "You've found a way to game the system." Carlo said, astonished. "It's on that new electronic roulette game, no?" "Yes." "Wait, hold on a second, I thought you said something about the payouts?" I said back to them "Well yes, you see if you-" "Apapapapa, not out loud on the floor." Carlo said, looking around for anyone who might be listening in. "Well, you just take this," The statistician said, pushing a notebook filled with figures and tables into your hand, "and fix it accordingly." He said, leaning forward and tapping the book twice with his hand before pulling his cane to his side and walking off. Carlo pulled his watch up. "Dinner." He said raising his eyebrows and walking away. "Oh hey, thats all we needed you for, if you want to give one of the tables a shot, managers get 25 tokens free."

The idea emerged fully formed in my head, I'd have to be an idiot to actually give the notebook away. In my hands I had an instruction manual to print money, and on my person I had the license to do just that. I walked back up the stairs, I'd get a night of sleep to clear my head, then do whatever was needed of me in the morning before sneaking back to my room to get the managers coat. I repeated the plan to myself in my head over and over again before I reached the curtain to my room, it was cramped in there, and yet barren, but the one hook I had on the wall had no other purpose and was instead left empty. I only had one set of clothes up until then, when I'd first arrived my clothes had been confiscated. I hung the waistcoat on the hook and threw the notebook into the hammock I slept in. My mind still raced with possibilities.

"Paycards here!" someone in the hall said. I turned and looked out, my minds thoughts of the heist and ill-gotten gains turning to the thoughts of a hard days work and the meagre wages I was owed for it. An arm pushed through my door and a small piece of paper was handed to me. It read out:

Raymond Marcello 60 Hours:

$186.00 PAY

-$25.00 CUP

-$50.00 BOARD

-$25.00 FOOD

-E. Cormack Koblenz.

I crumpled the paper in my hand and tossed it to the corner of my room. I opened the book and began to read, from what I could make out, the algorithms of the machine would roll onto the same number as the amount of money bet the last time it rolled, so I'd need to make a lot of small bets. It was a dirty trick, both to take the money of anyone making too large a bet and to save money on creating anything actually random on the company's part. As far as I could tell, I'd need to make one wager first, the paycheck, I dove into the corner of the room grabbing it and uncrumpling it the best I could. It was only then I noticed how exhausted I was. Wiping the near manic look off my face, I fell back into my hammock, repeating the plan to myself in my head.

Waking up I immediately threw myself out of bed, there was no time for contemplation, step one of the plan had to be carried out, no one could suspect anything, Koblenz wanted any reason to dock pay he could find... "$25.00 for a cup, ugh, who did he think he was?" I thought to myself.

Lightly pushing open the door to the office I found my space the same way as I always did, moving my finger horizontally and then vertically. Kitchen Duty. 8-10. The breakfast rush, an easy job. I barged out of the office and with a spring in my step made my way down the grand stairs, and into the kitchen. "Hey." A familiar voice sounded out. "Oh, hey Tino." "Kitchen duty eh." "Yep." "Well," A buzz rang out from the box Tino was working on but was soon overtaken by the whir of a fan. "It should be less hot now." "Thanks, Tino." "Well, I still need to fix the hood." "Well, how am I supposed to cook without a hood, thats fairly important so that I don't die?" "Yeah, well, boss said that no one was working the kitchen today so I have no clue. I guess just wait it out, I've never seen him come in here."

As I sat there I kept going over everything in the plan, and the correct method for gaming the machine, and hoping that the boss didn't come in. But for some reason I felt like I was missing something. It didn't matter, I kept going over everything in my head until Tino spoke up. "Hey, its 9:50, you get off now right." "Oh, uh yeah, thank Tino."

I went back to my room, trying to suppress the urge to sprint back there. As I pulled back my curtain and put on the waistcoat, that unshakeable feeling that I was missing something came back once more. I powered through it, I kept reminding myself that I wasn't and that it didn't matter if I was, I had enough to go off of, it was fine. I kept repeating everything in my head, my mind was flooded with it until there I was, in the casino.

I took one last breath and strode over to the electronic roulette table. "One on 36 please, I said to the croupier, handing him my pay packet, "Huh, 36 on 36," he said, placing the bet on 36, calling it, and spinning it, "Hey, how'd a manager like you get one of these anyway? Ah, don't worry about it, whoever's getting paid in these doesn't really matter, eh?" There it was again, that same rhetoric everyone seemed to have. It rolled to 21, no matter. "Hey, since I'm a manager I get a free 15 right?" "Yup." "Then 15 on 36 again." again he rolled, it came up, again and again I rolled on whatever number the same amount of money I had bet before was.

Pushing past the crowd that had formed around me, I took my tokens to the window, a woman behind it stared at me. "High roller eh?" She said "Well, here's the money," she went on, handing me a paper back filled to the brim with 20s "Might want to get away before anyone sees you." she said almost prophetically. "What the F*ck are you doin' in a manager's uniform Marcello?!" I heard cried out. I looked to where the yell came from, Mr. Koblenz, and he was charging, at least he was. Falling face forward onto the tiled floor, behind him, fist outstretched, I could see Tino. "Run." He silently mouthed.

So I did, through the blinding midday sun in my eyes, through the great doors, down to the docks, across the boardwalk and into a warehouse labelled Carson Manufacturers, there, I slipped into a crate, I didn't know where it was going, my mind was blank, and suddenly, the thing that I had forgot came flooding back to me. My wife, my beautiful darling Anette, I reached into my back pocket and for the first time in days gazed at her, just as beautiful as I had always pictured her in my minds eye, and there, in that crate, with that bag of money and picture of my wife I rested, assuring myself that I would never have to leave her as I did now again.