Slots

The wife's name was Lourdes, and she sat leaning forward with
her bony behind perched on the edge of the stool. She cursed
loudly and pounded the glass face of the quarter slot machine.
The husband, Maurice, stood behind her kneading her
shoulders. He said, "Getting late, dear. Maybe we should think
about going back to the room." Maurice had experienced more
than his share of flashing lights and whirring noises. He'd had
enough of the stale smoke and complimentary coffees for one
night.
Lourdes smacked the machine again, this time with the flat
of her palm. She whipped her head around, glared at her husband
and said, "Go away, will you? You've been bringing me lousy
luck all night." She shrugged free of her husband's hands and
twisted back around to give the machine's handle another yank.
She was like this sometimes. Especially when things weren't
going her way. Oftentimes, her already uncaring demeanor
toward Maurice eroded into outright ugliness. Tonight, however,
she was as bad as Maurice could remember, obviously deciding
to settle in for the long haul to try to recover the money she'd
already lost.

"Come on, Lourdes," Maurice pleaded. "Let's go to the
room."
Without turning to face him, Lourdes said, "I'm not walking
away from a machine that's ready to pay." Behind the glass in
front of her the symbols skidded to a stop.
Lourdes gave a tiny, clenched-teeth squeal and slapped the
machine again. She frowned over her shoulder and said, "Why
are you still here?"
Why indeed, Maurice wondered. All these years and she'd
been the same uncaring, insensitive Loudes. A woman who
cared only about herself. He glanced down at his shoes and
sighed. Ten years of marriage to a woman like Lourdes hadn’t
been easy. Although he'd tried to overlook her selfishness, it was
getting to the point where he couldn't ignore the mounting
thoughts of leaving her. But again and again he asked himself,
just how does a man up and leave someone he once loved more
than anything? How do you give up all the invested years? He
may not have been the happiest man in the world, but he figured
he was content. He had a job, owned a home, ate three meals
a day. What more could a man want? Love? Perhaps. But was it
worth the trouble of chasing down such a desire?
Maurice heard an odd, choking noise and raised his head.
Lourdes? Where was she? Her seat in front of the slot machine
was empty. He broke out in a sweat. His hands began to tremble.
It was then he caught a coiling wisp of gray smoke in front of the
machine. Slowly, the smoke streamed through the machine's coin
catch. On the carpet at the foot of the empty stool rested
Lourdes's little red sandals.
He crept forward and placed a palm on the empty cushion.
The seat was warm, the vinyl impression of his wife's butt rose
beneath his hand. What should he do? He combed the crowded
casino for one of the red-blazered attendants. But of course, like
police officers at a crime scene, there were none to be found. He
stared at the line of blinking buttons on the slot machine Lourdes
had been abusing. There was a red button with the word 'HELP'
printed on it. Maurice went to press the button, thinking maybe
that would bring someone over.
With his finger hovering above the 'HELP' button, Maurice
noticed Loude's forty dollars worth of unused credits. Almost
instinctively, he drew his hand away from the button. He thought
a minute, then reached up and grabbed the handle with his
sweaty palm. He glanced around furtively to make sure no one
was paying attention, then he yanked the handle toward him and
watched the wheels spin.
When the wheels came to a halt, Maurice stared long and
hard. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
On the centerline behind the glass, one of Lourdes’s hands
rested between two red cherries. He knew the hand belonged to
Lourdes's, because the fingernails were painted that gaudy purple
she liked. He backed away from the slot machine and stared in
horror as the fingers on the hand began to wiggle, as if to say,
“Hey, look at me.” The purple fingernails tapped the inside of
the glass.
Lourdes?
Maurice took a step closer and rapped his knuckles against
the glass.
With his knees bouncing like crazy, he pulled the handle
again.
This time when the wheels quit spinning, one of Lourdes’s
feet was lined up to the right of a pair of golden bells. While
Maurice stared, a grin grew on his face. The bare foot reared
back and kicked the glass hard. Maurice quickly gave the handle
another tug, and when the wheels rolled to a stop, both of
Lourdes’s brown eyes gazed back at him from behind the glass.
A fat genie sat to the left of the eyes. Without the rest of
Lourdes's bronzed face to complement her eyes, it was apparent
to Maurice just how thick a coat of mascara covered Lourdes’s
lashes. He tilted his head and studied the centerline, letting his
eyes wander from left to right, from right to left, watching his
wife’s eyes blink open and closed in rapid succession. Finally,
Lourdes's eyes narrowed into murderous slits.
Maurice gave the wheel another spin and laughed out loud.
Poor Lourdes. Her eyes grew wide before whirling away. One
flew upward, the other plunged down. The wheel snapped to
a stop and just his luck, staring at Maurice from dead center was
Lourdes’s big mouth. One of her ears, a dangling feather earring
still attached, rested on the right of her big mouth. A lucky
number 7 was bold on the left.
The lips flapped up and down, opening and closing. The toowhite
teeth appeared and disappeared, as did Lourdes’s
quivering tonsils. Maurice was sure she was spewing on about
being inside the machine, but for once in his life he didn’t have
to hear a thing she said. Bringing his mouth close to the glass,
Maurice whispered,
“It's over between us, dear.”
Lourdes's lips continued to flap. Maurice grabbed the handle
but before pulling it, he leaned an ear against the glass.
Lourdes said, “Get me --”
Maurice spun the wheel again.
Foot, cherry, bell. Nose, knee, a lucky number 7. Two ears
and a fisted hand. It went that way a while, always the winning
combination of genies or bells or cherries were ruined by one of
Lourdes’s body parts.
The credits plummeted. It occurred to Maurice that this
machine would never pay off. He punched the cash-out button
and watched the ticket spit out the slot. He closed his eyes and
tried to remember what it was like to be happily married and
intimate. But the only image he got inside his head was one of
Lourdes screaming at him for one reason or another. He slid over
to the stool in front of the next machine and, after feeding the
ticket, he yanked the handle.
And there it was. His luck had changed. Three fat genies all
in a row. A hundred and thirty bucks. Maurice fanned his face
with his fingers. This has to be a sign, he thought. He printed his
winning ticket and got up from the stool. A muffled scream rose
from the slot machine that had swallowed his wife. Should he
call for help? The more he thought about it, the more he could
see it didn’t matter one way or the other. He didn’t feel that same
constraint he’d felt before tonight. He felt suddenly free. He felt
as though life was suddenly endless and limitless.
When he heard Lourdes scream again, Maurice smiled. He
pocketed his winning ticket, twisted the ring off his finger and
dropped it clinking into the ashtray next to the machine.