A Road More Travelled

I sat behind the wheel, staring at the glowing red stoplight hanging in the intersection. A light drizzle of rain had become a steady fall, splattering against the glass of my windshield for a split second before my windshield wiper swiped across and cleared the droplets from the surface. In the rain, I could not see the dirt and grime on the streets. Lights reflected on the black surface of the road, changing how everything looked. I imagined the reflected images of the street lights were really coming from another universe that could only be vaguely percieved when the rains came and made everything wet and shiny.

And yet inevitably, I knew the rain would stop. The streets would dry. And all the magic that manifested in the rain would be gone, one more illusion of beauty taken from the world. The dirt, grime, and dust would return, and all would be as it had been. It made me sad, in some corner of my mind that was horrified by my grimy, dusty mundane life and yearned for beautiful things.

As the stoplights progressed through their endless cycle, the red light that had been blazing at me angrily suddenly turned green, and I was suddenly faced with a choice. At the intersection, I could go right and head home - but turning left would take me to Olympus. Not actual Olympus, the home of the Greek Gods of myth and legend, but a more human version of the place. A casino, to be exact. The biggest casino in town, in fact. One where I had been spending a great deal of my time and money recently, in an effort to leave behind the shackles of my working Joe life and make something new and exciting for myself: a future where I was not beholden to The Man; a future where I was the master of my own fate.

Olympus called to me. I could feel it's power even a mile away. I could hear the sound of the slot machines as they endlessly played music and carefully engineered sound effects intended to trigger primal instincts in the human brain and hold the attention of gamblers for hours at a time. I could smell the slightly musty odor of the carpets which were meticulously vacuumed and deep cleaned regularly but could still not fully be considered fresh. Too many spilled drinks, and cigarette ash, and God only knows what else were too much a part of the place to ever be fully exorcized. I could see the eyes of the pleasant and friendly dealers when they dealt me yet another losing hand, their professionally mandated sympathy almost too much for me to bear as I would lose one big bet after another to the tables.

And yet, despite all the heartaches and disappointments that I had suffered, I found myself turning left onto Broad Street and heading towards Olympus. This time would be different, I thought. I was DUE! Losing streaks are called streaks because they end. They MUST end. Mustn't they? I didn't believe in lucky talismans, or horoscopes, but I did believe that probabilities had a way of evening out over time. Of course, at a casino a gambler is more often than not betting against the house, which is nearly always a mathmatically doomed proposition. But once in a while. Every once in a while, a man could win against the house.

As I parked my beater of a car in the lot and walking into the casino, I thought of Jane. She was probably home sleeping, contending with her sizable baby bump that I gave her six months ago. It was also possible that she was up, worried about me. I carefully made sure I left my phone on Do Not Disturb to make sure she could not get through to me and act as my conscience as she so often did and talk me out of the stupid thing I was about to do. No, I said to myself, tonight is the night. Tonight I turn it all around, and her worry will be for nothing.

I stood in line for the cashier and paid for $2,000 in chips. Earlier that day, I had sold some of my mother's old jewelry that had been left to me in the will for some cash, which gave me some bills to play with tonight without generating an easily traceable paper trail for Jane to follow and catch me in the act. Anyway there wasn't much left in the accounts anyway. I had already cleaned most of them out trying to get a hot streak going at Olympus.

I gathered the chips and approached the gaming tables in the back half of the casino. That is, if casino's actually ever have a back or front. In most cases I found myself so confused by where I was in a casino, I would never really know if I was on my way in or out. Everywhere seemed to lead right where I was going. The roulette tables.

I walked up to a table that had a modestly sized group gathered around the sides, and waited a bit before jumping in with any bets, watching the wheel spinner guy do his thing and manage everyone's bets and spin the wheel. Judging by the excited yelps from the players around the table and the stacks of chips being pushed around, the wheel was hot. Burning hot.

"Red 32!" the dealer called out, and the players cheered again, most of whom had plunked their chips down on the generic red space on the felt betting area. It was my chance. It was time to change my fate. How could I lose, with this kind of momentum behind me? I waited for betting to open and then dropped every chip I had down on the red diamond shaped betting zone.

Players high fived me as they saw my investment in the game. The dealer nodded as he watched everyone place their bets and then spun the wheel and unleashed the white marble into the maelstrom of probability that was the roulette wheel. I closed my eyes, and I began to doubt.

What if this wasn't my chance? What if the house had rigged this table to defeat any big bets placed against it? What if this red streak was over and the wheel was way overdue for black? What if there was a reason why I hadn't won any money in this godforsaken casino in months? What if the owners had it out for me? What if I was doomed to lose all my money in this hellhole of a gambling den because I was addicted to this place and I refused to admit it? Shit shit shit shit shit!

The white marble bounced and tumbled across the outer ring of the roulette wheel, going crazy in it's drunken path through the chaos of random chance on its way to meet its destiny in just a few moments. It took an unusual bounce off the side of one of the little pockets where it might have landed in another lifetime, and bounced again, and again... and then fell into place as if that was where it was always going to end up.

My jaw dropped.