A Good Story and Other Stories

Breathe Deep

Black stitching over the left pocket of his white-silk shirt read chuck in cursive script. His pale, wiry arms were crossed below the name; his large Adam’s apple moved arrhythmically above. Before him on the small lima-bean-shaped green table the 200 playing cards were fanned out, awaiting fresh players.

It was 3:30 in the morning and fewer than half the tables in the main casino were staffed. A noisy crowd at one crap table gave an illusion of liveliness, but only four of the seven blackjack dealers on duty had any action. Chuck had stood here at the ten-dollar-limit table for nearly an hour; it was looking as though he wouldn’t deal a single round before his break.

“Hey, Chuck.”

At the left extreme of the table stood a small old man in a coons cap, smiling, hands in raincoat pockets. The raincoat hung open, showing a white shirt, a sloppily knotted dark, thin tie and a bit of dark jacket. The old man had shaved recently but not well, and his gray eyes were red-rimmed and merry. The dealer saw not much hope here, but he said, “A game, sir?”

“Maybe in a while, Chuck,” the old man said and grinned as though he were thinking of some joke. “Did you know I came out of the hospital just this morning?”

The dealer, his foot near the button that calls security, looked at the old man. He said, “Is that right, sir?”

“Sun City Hospital, right here in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fixed me up just fine. No more broken bones.” That I-know-a-joke grin appeared again.

“Sir, if you’re not interested in playing—”

“Oh, I could be, Chuck,” the old man said. “I might be.”

The night was slow, and the dealer’s break was due in just a few minutes. So he didn’t touch his foot to the button that calls security. “Take your time, sir,” he said.

“That’s all I’ve got,” the old man said, but then he grinned again. “I love the big Strip hotels at night.”

“You do, sir?”

“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I hate Vegas, you know, but I love the hotels at night. I come in, I breathe deep, I’m a young man again. All the old words come back, run around inside my mind like squirrels. You know what I mean, Chuck?”

“Excitement,” suggested the dealer, flat-voiced.

“Oh, sure. Oh, yes. By day, you know, I hang around downtown. You know those places. Big sign out front: PENNY SLOTS. FREE BREAKFAST. Penny slots.” The old man made a laugh sound in his throat — heh-heh — that turned into something like a cough.

“Sir,” said the dealer, “I want to give you some friendly advice.” He’d seen past the imperfectly shaved cheeks now, the frayed raincoat, the charity-service necktie. This was an old bum, a derelict, one of the many ancient, alcoholic, homeless, friendless, familyless husks the dry wind blows across the desert into the stone-and-neon baffle of Las Vegas. “You don’t belong here, sir,” he explained. “I’m doing you a favor. Security can get kind of rough, to discourage you from coming back.”

“Oh, I know about that, Chuck!” the old man said, and this time he laughed outright. “I belong downtown, with those penny slots. Start all over again, Chuck! Build a stake on those slot machines down there, penny by penny, penny by penny, come back!”

“Sir, I’m telling you for your own good.”

“Chuck, listen.” Hands in raincoat pockets, the old man leaned closer over the table. “I want to tell you a quick story,” he said, “and then I’ll go. Then we’ll go. OK?”

The dealer’s eyes moved left and right. His shift boss was down by the active tables. His relief dealer was almost due. “Keep it short,” he said.

“Oh, I will!” His hands almost came out of the raincoat pockets, then didn’t. “Chuck,” he said, “I know where I belong, but I just keep coming out to the Strip, late at night. It’s a fatal attraction. You know what that is, Chuck?”

“I think so,” the dealer said. He thought about showgirls.

“But what makes it, Chuck? Look around. No windows, no clocks, no day or night in here. But it’s only at night I like these places. That’s when they make me feel... good. Now, why’s that?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

The old man said, “Well, I was in here one time, and a couple of security fellows took me out back by the loading dock to discourage me a little. There were all these tall green-metal cans there, like if you have bottled gas delivered to your house out in the country, and I bumped into them and fell off the loading dock and all these big green-metal cans rolled off and landed on me. And that’s why I was in the hospital.”

The dealer looked at him. “But here you are back again.”

“It’s the old fatal attraction, Chuck.”

“You’d better get over it.”

“Oh, I’m going to.” Once again, the old man’s hands almost came out of his raincoat pockets but didn’t. “But I thought I’d tell somebody first about those green cans. Because, Chuck, here’s the funny part. They had them in the hospital, too.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right. ‘What’s that?’ I asked the nurse. ‘Oxygen,’ she said. ‘Any time you see a tall can like that, if it’s green, you know it’s oxygen. That’s a safety measure on account of oxygen’s so dangerous. You get that stuff near any kind of fire and the whole thing’ll burn like fury.’ Did you know that, Chuck? About green meaning oxygen?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, what I kept thinking was: Why does a big Strip hotel need about fifty cans of oxygen? And then I remembered the big hotel fire on the Strip a couple years ago. Remember that one?”

“I do,” the dealer said.

“It said in the papers there was a fireball crossed six hundred feet of main casino in seventeen seconds. That’s fast, Chuck.”

“I suppose it is.”

“In there, in the hospital,” the old man said, “I had this thought: What if, late at night, here in the casino, with no windows and no clocks, air conditioning out of vents all over, what if... Chuck, what if they add oxygen to the air? The very air we breathe, Chuck, this air all around us.” The old man looked around. “Here in this spider’s parlor.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the dealer said, which was the absolute truth.

“Well, I wouldn’t know, either. Chuck. But what if it’s true? Spice up the air at night with extra oxygen, make the gamblers feel a little happier, a little more awake?”

“I’m going to have to call security now,” the dealer said.

“Oh, I’m almost done, Chuck. You sec, those penny slots downtown, they won’t lead me back anywhere. I threw myself away, and I’m not coming back at all. I would have checked out of this rotten life two or three years ago, Chuck, if it hadn’t been for this fatal attraction. Come out to the Strip late at night. Breathe deep. Get a little high on that extra oxygen, begin to hope again, get roughed up by security.”

“They don’t do that with the oxygen.”

“They don’t? Well, Chuck, you may be right.” The old man took his hands from his raincoat pockets. In his right hand, he held a can of lighter fluid; in his left, a kitchen match. “Let’s see,” he said and squirted a trail of lighter fluid onto the green felt of the table.

The dealer, wide-eyed, stomped down hard on the button. “Stop that!” he said.

The old man kept squirting lighter fluid, making dark puddles in the felt. “Security coming, Chuck?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“Good. I’d like them to travel with us,” the old man said and scraped the match along the edge of the table.