Las Vegas is a one-way turn off. It's meant to be that way. Once there, there's no turning back.
That's why Vegas is in the desert instead of in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. People feel very lonely in the desert, so they cluster together like ants, like wolves, like prairie chickens. And they do strange thing in the desert.
Many people hallucinate in the desert. They see water just yonder, a veritable oasis of palm and pond. Or they see Orange Julius stands and Mrs. See's candy stores. People see all kinds of things in the desert.
But when people come to Las Vegas, which is smack dead – or would it be alive? – in the middle of the desert, they see lots of things that don't exist.
Like nickels turning into dollars, silver changing to gold, Volkswagens becoming Cadillacs.
They also see tots of free things that are very costly in the long run. Free golf, free meals, free women for men, and free men for women, free air. These things are free in the desert.
It's when people are in the green-felt jungle that things get expensive.
And nobody rules the green-felt jungles better than the owners of Tinker Toy town. They're the true dictators of the dollars. The emperors of a nickel and dime domain. The lords of loose change.
They know their business inside and out. For one thing, they've got the odds in their favor. It's like betting Columbus the world is flat. It's like wagering that a eunuch has balls.
But the most important factor is the human one. The itchy-twitchy feeling men and women, child and babe, all have in common.
Greed. Greedy dreams.
That's why there are so many shoeshine boys at the Las Vegas airport. Because they just put the last of their watermelon wages on the square bones with black eyes and done crapped out.
That's why there are so many free-lance hookers in Vegas. Because they were flat on their backs inside the air-conditioned tinkle palaces; and now they're in one-hundred-twelve-degree heat working on their backs so they can get bus fare home to hubby and the kids.
No one's unemployed in Vegas. People are either rich or poor, but never unemployed. The rich work at taking money from the poor, and the poor work at giving it to the rich. Everybody's working all the time.
It's also a town of regret.
Regret is very easy to play.
See the armadillo-shaped man from Amarillo with the vanilla shirt on. See the armadillo's skinny Texan wife. See him point his fat cigar in her scrawny face and say "I told ya to get the fuck out of here, Emily! I knew I would of got a cherry on this machine if you hadn't showed your falcon face 'round here."
Regret is everywhere in Vegas.
At the poker table, regret is in the hands of a dentist from Cleveland who's folded his cards and asked in his kindest voice if he can just peek at what the other guy had.
Regret.
At the blackjack table, regret is seen on the Chinese lady's face, the one who's got a sunshade hat on that looks more like a wok than an Easter bonnet, and she has an inscrutable smile on her face that tells the dealer. I knew I should've taken a card. I knew I should've taken a card.
Everybody plays regret because people with loose chap in their pocket love to play it. They're money masochists.
Guy's who clear ninety a week on their unemployment checks show their eagerness for playing regret when they're only an hour's drive away from Vegas and they're already saying: "Well, I brought lots of money, and I know I'm gonna lose 'cause the house has got the edge, but I'll have fun losing."
Which, to Las Vegas pros, is called logical regret.
At least that's what Manny Schwarz called it. He'd seen it enough times.
He's seen it just yesterday in fact.
When a busload of Optimist Club members pulled into his Tinker Toy Casino full of good cheer and good booze.
And Manny had heard them say very raucously: "Got money to burn, Lennie. Gonna have a great time. Don't care if I lose 'cause I'm gonna have a great time."
"You got the right idea, Elmer. Nothing's more fun than betting the big bucks. Shit, if you win, you're lucky and you had fun. And, shit, if you lose, it was fun bettin' the big bucks. Besides, we gotta have fun 'cause the cunts aren't along this trip anyhow."
Manny had heard the same talk too many limes. Shit, there was a time when Manny Schwarz regretted lots of things in his own forty-two years of hard living.
He regretted the time he had shipped in fifteen black whores from Cleveland to entice the Los Angeles black bucks to spend their money at the Tinker Toy Casino.
Then when he saw those L.A. spades coming in and spending their watermelon wages on ten-cent crap tables, he'd just about shit.
Then he did shit, because he saw where those blacks had totaled ten grand worth of Tinker Toys.
Shit, that's when being a smart fuck really helped.
Manny had done some quick thinking and some quick hustling. He finally landed a labor contact for twenty blacks to be shoeshine boys at the Las Vegas air terminal.
Christ, in another ten years, those black bastards'll be cleared of their debts.
And Manny regretted the time he had tried to cater to the chink, trade. The fucking slant-eyes who memorized cards, and prayed to Buddha for another seven to come up on the dice.
That was when the Tinker Toy Casino had gone in the red to the tune of fifty grand. Shit, the slopeheads had Buddha on their side. Jesus Christ.
Shit, after those two drastic enterprises, Manny Schwarz used his brains to think of better enterprises.
That was why he welcomed teachers and wealthy Arabs to the Tinker Toy Casino.
Teachers he wanted because most of them were unionized as they were a passive lot and they always went ape-shit when they found out about life as the greedy people lived it.
Arabs he welcomed because they were fucking fools. And, besides, he was a natural enemy of theirs anyway so he always tried to soak then, any way he could.
Like the time Alladah, the sheik who was rich enough to own the four biggest condom factories in America, blew three million American dollars in a game of Old Maid.
And that was why Manny Schwarz was second at sizing up teachers and Arabs.
In a glance he could tell if they liked women or boys, asses or mules, hand-jobs or blow-jobs, threesomes or foursomes, etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah, like those two teachers that were registering at the desk right now. The one looked like a coach, or a former Charger football player; hell, she was definitely lezzie.
As for the other one, the good looker; shit, she looked like hot frustration, probably having, man trouble, probably didn't like the lezzie's hand on her ass as she registered, probably looking to get away, to find happiness in the desert.
Yeah, like that one haggard-looking, scarecrow framed teacher that tagged along with the lezzie and Miss Frustration. Shit – probably sinning for the first time. Give her a couple of shots and she's off to the fucking races. Give her a couple of strokes and she's foot-racing her lover to an orgy. Give her a couple of fucks and sucks and dirty books, aid she's back with the human race.
Manny picked up the house phone.
A voice said: "Yes sir."
"Clarence, round up Pixie Delight for the lezzie in number fourteen. Get Eddie to take care of Miss Frustration in thirteen. Then send a bottle of Southern Comfort up to the witch in twelve."