Congratulations on Betting Too Much on Black!

It’s easy to get carried away in casinos.  They’re designed to encourage you to focus monomaniacally on a single task, a task that never ends and demands your constant attention, lest you miss the dice roll that makes or breaks your fortunes.  Even if you want to go out and see some entertainment, it’s almost always going to be awful, a roughshod cobble of lackluster fare meant to encourage you to get back out on the floor and bet, bet, bet.

Even in an exotic locale like, let’s say, rural Vietnam, it’s easy to get squirreled up in a casino and become so absorbed in gambling that you bet all of your money, every single penny, on roulette.  And sometimes that last bet doesn’t work out, so you end up in debt to a group of ex-Vietcong who have dreamt of taking their revenge on Americans for years who, in a gesture of ultimate spite, suggest that, to win back your money, you have a single dramatically staged roulette spin that either gets you your money back or condemns your shrill harpy of a wife and your foul, opinionated chitterling of a daughter to a brutal and isolating form of modern slavery.

Today is the day of that elaborately staged roulette spin.  It’ll be happening at 11:45 in the morning, Vietnam time.  You’ll show up in a sweat stained suit, wearing a crumpled white cap stained with red from the beating you took from casino thugs yesterday. Your wife and daughter will be waiting for you.  It’ll be the first time you’ve seen them since they were taken into “protective custody” yesterday after the arrangement was made.  You’ll give them a stoic nod, then announce to the casino owner.

“Let’s put it all on black.”

He’ll bark a quick laugh, then shout to an employee in Vietnamese.  The wheel will begin spinning.  The employee he spoke to will drop the ball with an audible plunk.  The other casino patrons, the other employees, the thugs that worked you over, will all be watching the wheel.

When it lands on green, the casino owner will shake his head.

“A pity,” he’ll murmur before nodding to his men.  Then he’ll open the chamber of a revolver and slip a single round into it before pressing it into your hand.  “A chance to pay me back,” he’ll say to you with a wink.

You’ll consider unloading the revolver into his head, but instead you’ll swallow and pocket the gun, walking off into the swamps.  Sure, he won this round, but he doesn’t know how unmanageable those two are.  You’ll fully expect to see them back in your apartment in Los Feliz waiting to give you an earful.  The prospect of shooting yourself in the head won’t even occur to you.

Congratulations on Betting Too Much on Black!