Page 51 of Serial Killer Games

“It’s not time.”

It’s not time.I stop in the middle of the sidewalk, and the world twists around me and past me on an invisible current of fun and life and pleasure that spat me out years ago. I haven’t been able to find my way back to it. I’ve been twirling in aneddy on the fringes looking in ever since, like a ghost shut out by the living. I could scream at the top of my lungs and no one would hear me. I’m ready to rejoin the living.

It’s not time.

“He wanted one last night on the town,” Jake says. I can read the subtext. He’s protective of a fellow dying person’s last wish. He stands there, mirroring me, like he too is a ghost the liquid nightlife slips around and through.

“But he isn’t here,” I say. That’s the tragedy of it. He isn’t anywhere anymore.

Jake considers me. “Why did you come all the way to Las Vegas?”

“He wanted me to bring him here.”

“I think he wanted to bring you here. He wantedyouto have his last night on the town,” he says.

Around me, people laugh and shriek and take photos. Neil loved all this insanity.Lovedit. And I know Jake is right. The token, the ashes—this wasn’t some gesture Neil wanted for himself. He wanted it for me.

He wanted me to come here when I was ready and lose it all. I have to keep playing until it’s all gone—until every penny and every speck of dust has been cleared out. Riches to rags. Rebirth on the Las Vegas Strip.

It won’t take long, and Jake’s here to help me do it. He holds out his hand experimentally, and when I take it, it feels like we’re shaking on something.

Inside the Wynn, Jake says, “What about crabs?” He soundssocasual.

“You mean craps?”

Are his cheeks pink, or am I imagining it?

“Yes,” he says. “What did you think I said?”

I fucking hate craps, and as it happens, I’m pretty good atit. Good enough to know how to make a bad bet. When the dealer flips the marker toOff, instead of asking for tens or fives or something I can play for a while, I ask for a single black chip. I place it on twelve, the worst bet on the table, and in my head I can hear Neil wailing over house edge.

The stick man pushes the dice over to us, and I let Jake do the honors.

“Take two!” the stick man shouts when Jake mistakenly picks up all five, and he drops three back onto the green, which the stick man hooks back in. Jake rattles the dice like this is Gambling Clichés 101, and he sends them shooting across the green. They bounce off the far wall of the table where I can’t see them and settle. People hoot and mutter and groan, and the stick man and the two dealers throw themselves over the table, scooping away lost bets, moving chips, stacking fresh chips next to winning bets.Clack, clack, clack. The other players start tossing new chips on the table and calling new bets. I tug Jake’s sleeve to go.

“Wait,” he says. “Your winnings.”

For some incomprehensible reason, the dealer nearest us groups stacks of chips from his bank together—a few thousand dollars, at least—and then slides it across the green…over to us.

My problem has grown thirty times larger in as many seconds.

“Take down our bet,” I shout. “I want you to take down our bet.”

We cash out again. Outside it’s cooling off, and I shiver and walk faster, and Jake places his coat on my shoulders. My heart pounds in my chest.

“You have good luck tonight,” he says.

“There’s no such thing as luck,” I say contemptuously.Whether you’re playing dice or fighting cancer or losing the genetic lottery to a neurodegenerative disease. Gamblers are superstitious idiots. They spout maxims and philosophies that sound snappy in a fortune cookie, things likeIn order to win, you must be willing to lose everything. I was willing to lose my husband, for his sake. I won nothing.

Jake shrugs, that small, asymmetrical smile appearing. “Surely we both believe inbadluck.”

Just inside the door of the Venetian, we stop in our tracks to take in a giant spinning wheel of fortune. Gambling for kindergartners. Neil would have despised this. I hand the cash to the dealer, who does a double take and spares a pitying glance for the idiot tourists blowing their money. He spins the wheel, and it’s so big it fills my whole field of vision. I feel nauseous watching it. I close my eyes. Twenty-four percent house edge, I remember. It drifts up out of nowhere. And when I open my eyes, the wheel has stopped, and Jake is staring at me like I’m a magician. The dealer, too.

I watch Jake collect from the dealer, handsome dark head bent, taking the cash with those hands I’d recognize anywhere now. My winning streak won’t extend to him. I won’t win anything in this game with Jake.

My head throbs. I’m feeling frantic and vicious and hurtful.

At Caesar’s Palace, I search out a roulette table with a high minimum bet just in time to hear the ball rattle into its groove. The dealer calls out “Five black even!” and everyone around the table groans or sighs or laughs as he wipes the surface clear. I exchange my cash for several neat stacks of purple chips.

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