A Gambling Man

Steve Buchanan sailed through the green traffic light without a hitch, his first sign of good luck. The afternoon sun reflected off the club’s white facade, brightening the car park, where cigarette butts and crumpled betting slips lay abandoned on the bitumen. Today, he had a fat stack of fifties in his wallet and a clear run at his favourite parking spot. Not bad for a Friday. Not bad at all.

He wasn’t an addict, of course. Playing the pokies was just a bit of fun, a way to unwind. Everyone had their thing: his apprentice, Lachie, parked his skinny arse on a beanbag and gamed for hours; his subcontractor, Mike, crushed a six-pack of Jim Beam and Cola before dinner; and sweet Mrs Buchanan? She buttered some popcorn, poured a crisp glass of chardonnay, and scrolled endlessly through Instagram. Nothing wrong with a little hobby. Nothing at all.

Framing houses in Brisbane was sweaty work, and as he stepped out onto the car park, the sun heavy and cancerous, he wished he’d gone home first, showered, and changed. But that would come with questions. Why are you home so early? You’re not going out, are you? Don’t you think that money would be better in our joint savings? Can’t you find another hobby?

The club’s aircon was sweet, and the hostess’s smile made him forget all about the puddle of sweat under his armpits.

“Good afternoon, Steve,” she said. “Good to see you again!”

Steve smiled and nodded back.

He started the session with a Canadian Club and Dry, poured straight from the tap. “Ice and lime?” the bartender asked.

“Yes, please,” he said, unable to hide his relief, beads of sweat trembling beneath his moustache.

“Cash or card?”

He pulled out his wallet, thick with cash. “Card, please.”

Where to today? he pondered, staring into the galaxy of the gaming floor. Lights of bright colours blared from hundreds of machines, while beeps and whirls rang out. As he walked forwards, he felt like he was floating through a maze of stars.

“Slay the Kraken,” enticed a masculine voice from the Deep-Sea machine.

“Try your luck on me,” purred a mysterious woman with jade eyes and a face hidden behind a scarf of scarlet silk.

 He’d played them both, and hundreds of others too.

But today, he wanted to try something different. It wasn’t that he was bored. How could anyone get bored with so many games to play? It was the fact that this day was shaping up to be a special one. He couldn’t quite explain why, but the feeling had been with him since he woke up, when he imagined himself sliding a crisp, yellow fifty-dollar note into the slot.

“Any new machines?” he asked Rob, the tall, slender gaming attendant whose thick glasses enlarged his brown eyes.

“Right this way,” Rob said, rubbing his hands together and smiling his wide, white grin.

Explore the Universe, Steve read the machine’s title. “This will do just fine.” He turned to thank Rob, but the gaming attendant was gone, slinking away through the maze to assist another customer.

Steve loved nothing more than sinking into a gaming chair for the first time each day. The cushion was soft, the armrests just right, and the chair’s slight tilt eased the day’s aches into nothing but memory.

He took a sip of his CC and Dry, placed it in the drink holder, and studied the machine. New, alright. Flash too. The screen towered above him in a long curve. How many rows does this thing have? At least a dozen.

All the controls were touchscreen, each a different colour: hot pink, neon blue, lime green, bright yellow. He couldn’t wait to touch them all. But what caught Steve’s eye the most were the game’s symbols. Explore the Universe featured dozens of space-themed images—floating asteroids, little green aliens, red rocket ships—but what truly held his attention was the feature. A swirling black hole.

“I’m coming for you, baby,” he whispered.

Just as he was about to play his first note of the day, his phone vibrated firmly in his pocket. It was his wife. Without hesitation, he thumbed the call to silent and slid in the fifty.

The machine sprang to life with a pleasant jingle, and Steve drifted away from his phone, his stink, his work clothes, Brisbane, and Earth. He was in space now, an astronaut exploring all the universe had to offer. His rocket ship was sleek, air-conditioned, and alive with a dazzling array of colours. But the best part was how little direction it required—just a touch of his fingers, an occasional sheet of yellow fuel.

He pressed the attendant button. A nebula, a telescope, a solar flare, and a host of planets appeared on the screen before him. More spins and more pretty symbols.

“Anything I can get you?” asked a voice.

“CC and Dry.” It tasted like nothing, barely even cold, but soon it was finished. He pressed the attendant button.

“Another one?”

He nodded.

“This should keep you cool.”

The red planet was unlike any world he’d visited before. Its surface was full of craters, and each crater hosted hundreds and thousands of caves. The atmosphere was a lazy purple, but beneath the rocky and barren surface he uncovered more sheets of yellow fuel. And good thing too, he was beginning to run low.

It didn’t feel like a long time, but when he eventually ran out of fifties, the gaming room was mostly empty, just a few lifeless bodies tapping away. Through the small window attached to the emergency exit, he could see the sun had disappeared. Nighttime here on Earth, he thought, almost mournfully.

Steve managed to stretch the next working week out until Thursday. At 2 PM, he whistled at Lachie. “Tidy up here, mate. Mike’s in charge. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

Sailing through another green light, he once again beat everyone to his lucky parking spot and didn’t have to sweat the cash machine line either. The misso had sent him to pick up Chinese for dinner yesterday, and while he was at it, he’d just happened to breeze by an ATM.

Wasting no time getting back to Explore the Universe, he skipped the bar and ordered a CC and Dry straight to his machine. “Come on, you bugger,” he muttered, sliding in the first note of the day. I had fun last time, but I’d need to walk away with some money in my pocket.

Steve’s finger jittered over the spin button as the final row rolled. After throwing in $150, he was up to $207 and in no mood to let the good times end. The roll stopped, revealing a symbol of floating space debris.

“Shit.” He upped his bet from $1.50 to $2.00.

Twelve CCs later and about five hundred spins in, Steve was down to his final bar of fuel, drunk-flying his spaceship in search of that black hole. The major jackpot sat at thirty thousand dollars and climbing, and all he needed was a straight row of the dark, swirling feature to park his spaceship and rest for good. Ninety-nine percent of gamblers quit before their big win, he joked, before his final two bucks spun to nothing.

Steve staggered out of his chair, made his way to reception, and had them order him a taxi. Waiting, he pulled out his phone. It was two thirty in the morning, he had nine missed calls from Wifey, and he needed to send a quick text: Lachie, I’ll be in late tomorrow. Get started without me. Mike should know what to do. He wasn’t going to gamble again tomorrow—Steve Buchanan was not an addict—he just knew that to make it through another workday, he needed his eight hours of sleep.

It was eleven o’clock when the taxi dropped him back at the league’s club. The sun was a giant, hot ball in the sky, waves of heat rippling off the car park’s black tar. Last night’s alcohol sweated out of him in dribbles, his mind a fog, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how hard Mrs Buchanan had slammed the door on her way out to work this morning.

She was a far cry from his mother, but every now and then, especially lately, the similarities were eerie. Steve’s mum had been a control freak, running his childhood home like an army barracks with no time for play. Sometimes, he’d wished she’d just let go…

“God, it’s hot,” he said to himself, alone in the car park. It’s going to be a long day at work, he realised, staring at the club’s glass doors. The air con’s so pleasant in there. Besides, hair of the dog and all that. He forced himself to laugh.

After much debate, Steve slinked into his Hilux and shut the door. But whatever heat hung outside paled in comparison to the thick, suffocating hotness inside his vehicle. His nose hairs stung, and last night’s grog threatened to come up and land in his lap.

“Nah, fuck this.” He slammed the door, locked the car, and marched into the club.

Steve’s dreams were filled with a blackness, so vast it was that each morning when he woke, he felt as if more than an evening had passed. He floated in that realm of nothing for lifetimes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, being nothing. Sometimes a distant light would flash, and he would turn his floating self and drift towards it, but whenever he drew closer, the light would blink away to the colour of nothing. He always woke thirsty and sweating and afraid, but nothing scared him more than the feeling of drifting through the void without his spaceship. 

Around and around the symbols went, aliens and space rocks, falling stars and exploding galaxies. The more they spun the higher the jackpot rose. It was at sixty thousand now, and he’d drifted by some black holes, true, but none that could pull him away from the world in which he was lost.

“Another one?”

He nodded. He inhaled the bubbly liquid. He left.

“Today’s the day,” he said, sitting before Explore the Universe. Steve rubbed the feature’s display images, prayed to God, to Buddha, the universe, and played his first fifty of the day. A few hundred mindless hits later, the machine let out a noise that sent Steve’s pulse into hyperdrive. Ding-ding-ding!

A shout flew from him, “Jackpot!”

He’d done it.

Blackholes filled the screen. The machine rattle and jingled. Lights flashed. Steve Buchanan won the grand jackpot.

It was only midday when he left the club and stepped out into the car park, a cheque of $80,000 folded neatly in his top pocket. The sun was pleasant today, hidden behind a cloud as a breeze washed over his face. It would only be a fifteen-minute wait for the bus, which wasn’t so bad. Besides, he now had the funds to buy back his Hilux and maybe even enough spare to get his business back on its feet. It would be a lot of work. He still didn’t have enough to pay off the wages he owed Lachie and Mike, but bugger them. The first thing he needed to do was get his house back. And his wife. Eighty thousand wasn’t nearly enough to cover the missed mortgage payments or prove to his missus that he’d turned a corner. But with the right luck, and the universe on his side… who knew where that eighty grand could take him?