Casino Eulogy
Casino Eulogy
by Lucas. X Wiseman
A harsh clack from the intercom interrupted the ruffling cards, the clinking chips, and the staccato tumble of dice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Franklin “Two Chip” Johannes has just passed away,” an elderly woman rasped over the speakers. “In honor of his life, and to remember the pair of Melange poker chips he always carried with him, we will observe two minutes of silence. Thank you.”
Around the high stakes table, the blackjack players huffed their frustration. The dealer put a single finger on the deck of cards in front of her, pursed her lips, and then leaned back and closed her eyes tight. The gamblers, used to the enormous rollicking noise of the casino, could not bear the quiet. They leaned together and whispered.
“The nerve of that woman,” the shrewd madame said. “Mourning him after what she did.”
The madame was made up of jangling jewelry and unsubtle allure, but her green eyes were hawkish.
“A man’s life should only be measured in dollars lost and lovers won.”
“You know, I auditioned for Two Chip once,” murmured the starlet in the scarlet dress. “He went with someone older, didn’t want ‘a girl the same age as his daughter’ in a love scene. But I wouldn’t have minded.”
The starlet was a shimmering ruby, her eyes twinkling, nearly blinding in her brilliance. She drew the eye so completely that the middle-aged mobster beside her was barely perceivable, except as a hand on her thigh and a column of leathery pipe smoke.
“I knew him. Hard bastard, but fair too,” the mobster said, wagging his pipe to the other corner of his mouth. “Heard he got soft, that’s how his woman took this casino from him.”
“I heard those two chips he carried were all he had of this place, after,” the starlet said. “It’s almost romantic.”
“Or tragic. He used to sing at my establishment, before he got into the movies,” the madame said. “Always a gentleman to the girls he took home. Broke more than a few hearts, he did.”
“And now he’s dead,” the mobster said. “End of an era.”
Without ceremony the two minute mark passed, and the jumbled roar of chips, cards, and dice resumed. The dealer opened her eyes, and tears tumbled down.
“You know,” she said as she reshuffled the cards. “My dad was the one who got me this job. Quietly, of course. Different last names and all. He laughed, after; amused that I was still here but he wasn’t. I loved that he laughed, despite everything.”
She dealt the cards quickly and professionally, and the blackjack table became an oasis of quiet in the midst of a cacophony of avaricious glee. The dealer danced a pair of bright blue Melange chips across her knuckles and studied the players.
“You knew him in your own tiny ways, as a mob boss or a singer or a movie star, but you only held fragments of who he was. And I pity you for that. You’ll never know what you missed.”
