Fruit Machine

Lost deep inside the belly of the casino, Alice decided to rest. Her legs were sore and the signs had been promising that the cashier was just around the corner for hours. 

Every room she entered was familiar, with all the same assortment of poker tables, slot machines, and garish red carpet. Yet every room was new, she was certain, for each one had some kind of flashy landmark she hadn’t seen before: a chandelier made of pearls, a giant glass flamingo, a floor-to-ceiling aquarium glowing and filled with all kinds of exotic fish, and other things of the sort. 

Right, after right, after right, she had turned, and still no cashier to be seen. Alice concluded that she must be walking in a very large circle, or perhaps in some kind of downward coil, burrowing deep into the Earth. Like most casinos, this place had no windows to the outside world. Just imitations, like a ceiling painted with clouds. She was tempted to backtrack, even after all of her apparent progress. But, she figured, if she had somehow missed the cashier, she’d loop around at some point. 

For now, she was stopped, too tired to continue, and wanting to sit. She ventured off the carpeted path and into the thick of slot machines, arranged like a carousel. The slots hummed at her entrance, ringing out with sounds of flowing cash. “25¢” flashed on their screens. Alice almost laughed; how disappointed they would be to find out that all she left was nineteen cents, in the form of a crisp, white voucher. She’d have to find the penny slots to do anything with that. Still, she fed her voucher to one of the machines. This was her ticket to sit down, after all. 

No sooner had the machine begun to vibrate, eagerly calculating the worth of her voucher, than a server appeared behind her. “Something to drink?” she offered. 

“Actually,” Alice responded, “would you mind telling me where I can find the cashier?” 

The server gave a contained smile and pointed in the direction Alice had been walking. “Up that way, then take a right.”

Figured. All the staff acted this way, giving coy responses to her questions. 

“You know what, I think I’ll take a rum and coke.”

With the server off to fetch her drink, Alice was left to the company of the twenty-five cent machine in front of her. It was doing its best to tempt her out of the six cents she didn’t have. “JACKPOT, JACKPOT, JACKPOT” danced on the screen. Behind the glass sat an array of fruit – cherries, melons, bells, and sevens. The disks were stuck in a near miss: cherry, cherry, seven.

What did they taste like? Alice wondered. For a moment, she wished she could open the panel, to reach inside and pluck one out. She gave the lever on the side an experimental tug, curious to see if it might magically come to life, even six cents short.

Unsurprisingly, the disks remained still. 

“Excuse me.”

Alice turned, expecting to see the server with her drink. Instead, she was met with a buff woman, looking to be in her early thirties like Alice, sporting a black eye and a gash in her cheek. Alice thought perhaps she had done something wrong and this was who the casino sent to come clobber her. Just because I sat down?

“I need to talk to you.” The woman’s speech was slurred. Before Alice could respond, the stranger slumped down into the seat next to her. “I’m assuming you’ve seen my face plastered on the billboards around here?”

Certainly not looking like that. Alice shook her head no. 

“No? So, ‘Lily the Viper’ doesn’t ring a bell?”

Again, Alice shook her head no, now somewhat relieved that this drunk stranger probably wasn’t looking to thrash her.

The woman rubbed her temples. “Okay, well I guess it doesn’t really matter. Look, I feel like I’m going crazy and I just need someone to give me a reality check, alright? Here,” she said, rifling through her pockets, pulling out a white voucher like Alice’s and flicking it her way, “I can see you haven’t got enough to keep playing, so I’ll make it worth your while. You just have to sit there and listen.” 

Alice’s eyes widened at the amount. Lily had just casually handed over a voucher for a hundred dollars. She fiddled with it, considering. Lily – if that was even her real name – screamed all kinds of trouble: beat up, intoxicated, a bit rude, and handing away a large sum of money to a complete stranger. Once Lily’s money mixed with hers, it’d be impossible to tease them apart again, a dual fate intertwined in the guts of the machine. And what does she know? What if I was some kind of weirdo? She looked up at her. Even through the swelling and the glare stuck on her face, she could see both her eyes, intense and desperate. Doesn’t she have anyone looking out for her?

The machine was strangely quiet now as if holding its breath. That server really is taking her damn time with my rum and coke. 

“Okay,” Alice started with a sigh, “You should know that I’m very unlucky. If you give me this money, the machine is probably just going to eat it up. You’re alright with that?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Okay so let me think, where to start…”

Alice inserted the voucher and the machine thrummed up with delight, the screen bursting out a saccharine display of rainbows and gold coins. Betting the maximum, she could get about a hundred spins with this. She clicked the button and watched, mesmerized as the fruit came to life, whirling around in front of her. In the background of her mind, she listened to Lily tell her story:

“Okay, I had this match – I think it was a couple of hours ago, I’ve been down here so long, I’m actually not sure anymore – and yeah, I lost. First professional loss, if you can believe it. So that stings. I get my payout and it’s just garbage compared to what I’m used to getting. I decide that no, I didn’t just waste the past six months training for this measly ass payout, I’m gonna double that shit. So I come down here, play some Blackjack, and yeah, I’m doing great, downing shots and making money, when I go to the bathroom. When I come out, I’m lost. And I can’t find my wallet. At first I figure, yeah okay I’m a bit drunk, no big deal. But then I’m just wandering around and I can’t find anything or anyone. All these tables,” she said, motioning out, “and nobody’s manning them. I’m tripped out. At first I figure, it’s late and coach’ll come track me down in the morning. But then, I realize something scary. I don’t remember my coach’s name. And when I think about it,” her voice began to shake, “I can’t remember his face either.”

Lily paused, looking to Alice for her reaction. Alice wasn’t lying when she said she was unlucky; over the course of Lily’s story, she had clicked her way through a hundred dollars and sixteen cents, leaving her with less than what she started with. Annoyed, she printed a new voucher for her three pennies and pulled her attention back towards Lily. “You sure the alcohol isn’t getting to you?”

“No!” Lily responded, standing up, “You’re not understanding. Something’s wrong. I’ve trained with this man every day for fifteen years. There’s no way I’d forget that,” she said, pointing up to her head. Her lip began to tremble as she continued, “I’m forgetting other things too. I can’t remember my hotel room. Or where I’m from. Or my family, if I even have one. I can feel it fading away. It’s like it’s bleeding out of me.” Her bruised face contorted into tears.

Alice’s heart softened as she watched the fighter fold into herself, sobbing, collapsing back into the seat. She reached out to pat her on the back. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s just the stress getting to you, that’s all. You’ve had a big night.” She held up the voucher to her face, “Look, I’ve wasted all your money like I said I would. I was looking for the cashier before you came along. How about we go look for it together? I bet they’ll know what to do.”

Lily looked up, sniffling. “You really want to cash in three cents?”

“Yep, I’m not walking out of here with nothing.”

They shared a laugh. “Okay,” Lily started, wiping her eyes, “we’ll do that. Thank you. I know I sound like a lunatic. But it’s just so weird, you know? And there’s nobody around. I was really relieved when I saw you – I thought you looked like a nice lady.”

“Lady?” Alice laughed again. “I don’t think I’m much older than you!”

Lily’s back became stiff beneath her touch, and a strange, perturbed expression shadowed her face. Confused, Alice looked at the hand she had placed there on her back. It was old. The skin was loose and spotted, veins protruding out beneath inflamed knuckles. She gasped, withdrawing the hand into herself. It was soft. She pulled herself close to the machine and looked for her reflection.

“What’s wrong?” Lily asked. “I hope I didn’t offend you,” she tried to joke. It was no use.

Alice’s eyes were the same, she thought, but they were tired and surrounded by sagging skin. Alice felt as if it had been a very long time since she looked in the mirror. 

“I’m sorry. I have to go.” Alice stood up, racing away from Lily. She tried to ignore the sounds of Lily’s pained sobs and pleas to come back, to not leave her there alone. The sound and the memory of “Lily” faded with every footstep. 

This time, she ran in a counterclockwise direction, supposedly re-entering where she had already been. But with every left came a new gaudy novelty she hadn’t seen before, or at least could not remember: ice sculptures of swans, marble columns lined with LED displays of fire, trees and flowers made from diamonds, everything a resplendent counterfeit of a life outside of this place, a dream of the real world. 

When she could run no longer, she crumpled at the foot of a machine – she had found the penny slots. In tears now herself, she looked up to the fruit on the disks, weeping. She remembered nothing, not even that she had forgotten. She did not remember the taste of food or the feel of hunger. She couldn’t even remember what money was or why she wanted it. Soon, she might forget it all again. And how long had it really been? How long had she been searching for the cashier? 

A clink of glass caught her attention. Her server was standing over her, placing her rum and coke next to the machine. “Please,” Alice begged. “Please tell me where the cashier is. I just want to get my money and go home.” She didn’t remember what home was, but the words came easy to her, like it was something she had said a million times before. 

With the same smile, the server pointed right. “Let me know if you need anything else.” With that, she departed again, leaving Alice to her misery.

Alice pulled out her voucher for three cents, the thing holding her back, keeping her there, wandering and lost. “Is this what you want?” she asked the machine. She felt a warm breeze carry itself through the room, as if the casino was taking in a deep breath. Yes, she decided, this must be it. And even if it wasn’t, she’d have no reason to stay if she had no money left. 

The machine took in the voucher slowly, as if licking its lips. Alice had three spins. She pulled the lever once. Then twice. Then one last time.

The room erupted with hysteric joy, every machine chiming with the classic “sound of rain,” as if coins were flooding in from the halls. Alice stared, incredulous, as her one cent became two, then three, then thousands more after that – she had won the jackpot: 7,7,7. 

Alice was forgetting something, she realized. There was some tension, some urgency that had been wringing her mind up until a second ago. But all of that was fading away, filled up by the fortune she had just made. She began to whoop and jump, delirious with glee, and she raced to print out a new, shiny voucher.

Alice couldn’t wait to find the cashier.