A Sure Thing

By Harold Brown

Among the slot machines, Riley gambles for a different kind of jackpot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harold Brown
• Release date: Jan 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524267209

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A Sure Thing | by | Hal Stephens

A Sure Thing

by

Hal Stephens

Riley, expecting good things, entered the casino just before sunset. The entrance was crowded and the parking shuttles were stacked up. Riley patiently waded through the crowd. Once inside, the crowd thinned. Most of the crowd were escapees from local assisted living facilities. Riley had been prodded by canes and had his foot pinched by a walker or two.

What Riley hoped to win made it all worth it.

Inside, Riley hit a wall of noise and flashing lights, punctuated with bells, whistles and whatnot. Riley's ears adjusted and he smiled, chilly at the crowd of machines and humanity. No need to hit the ATM; he had a wad folded deep in his pocket. He resisted the momentary urge to go to the first slot-machine he saw and plug a note into its bill-feeder. Instead, he began his prowl. Moving left, Riley stalked the carrels of machines. More than half were already occupied. Automatically, Riley divided the people into anonymous groups..

There were spry seniors making tiny bets with their Social Security money. These were the smart ones; they enjoyed the games, but came to play only after they had paid their bills. They were the ones playing in groups of two or three. They laughed a lot, played and usually earned enough reward-points to eat on the casino's dime.

Then there were the grim-faced fifty- and the sixty-somethings. They were usually alone. If there was a couple, only one played while the other suffered silently. Determined, flirting with disaster, they would play through the early hours of the night. They would leave dissatisfied and argue all the way home.

Though it was rather early for them to appear, Riley saw some youngsters, kids in their early twenties who had come to the casino on a lark. They would drink, and play, and whoop it up until the wee hours of the morning. In the sober dawn, most of them would wake, hungover, wondering why they wasted so much money. Most would never return. Some would come back, not often,