Of all of gambling's card games, Dexter liked blackjack the most. He could sit at the table and play for hours. He had a system that seemed to work well and he usually came out a few dollars ahead.
It was a simple game and he played according to the printed odds. In fact, he often verified with the dealer how he should play a hand whenever he had some doubts. He talked to the pit bosses about business and the nature of the game. Most of the time, there wasn't that much suspense.
This particular afternoon, he was seated at the twenty-five dollar table with a stack of ten chips totaling two hundred and fifty dollars in play. He got a pair of eights with the dealer showing a six. He split the eights. The first card on the eight was an eight. He split it. The card on the eight was a three. He doubled down and the dealer laid a ten on it. The card on the next eight was a two. He doubled down and the dealer laid a King on it. He got another eight on the last eight. He split them. The next card was a three. He doubled down and got a ten. The card on the last eight was an ace. He now had two thousand dollars on the table.
With shaking hands, he watched the dealer turn over his bottom card. It was a ten. With the six that had been showing the dealer was going to have to take a card. The dealer laid down a ten and went bust. Dexter won the biggest payout of his life – two thousand dollars.
He left a thousand on the table for his next bet. He was dealt a blackjack with an immediate fifteen hundred dollar payout. He pulled a thousand off the table and added five hundred to his stack of chips. He now had a stack of sixty green chips. A crowd started gathering behind him.
The next hand he had twenty against the dealers nineteen. He pulled fifteen hundred off the table while adding ten more chips to his stack. It was beginning to wobble. The dealer counted chips and replaced it with three five hundred dollar chips, two hundred dollar chips, and two twenty-five dollar chips.
The next hand was a nineteen against the dealer's bust. The crowd was starting to get a lot more vocal. They cheered when the dealer went bust. There were comments about how much had been bet when the dealer made the payout.
Dexter took fifteen hundred and added two hundred and fifty dollars to his bet. He was now betting two thousand dollars. He was dealt a pair of sevens. The crowd muttered looking at the cards on the table.
Looking at the pit boss, he asked, "Should I split it?"
"The dealer has a five showing," the pit boss said. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "The book says that you split on a pair of sevens against a dealer's five."
Dexter split the sevens. He now had four thousand dollars on the table. The dealer laid a ten on the first seven. Dexter waved him off. The dealer laid a ten on the second seven. It could have been better, but it could have been a lot worse.
The dealer turned over a six. With the five, the dealer now had eleven. The entire crowd groaned on seeing the hole card. A few people even walked away convinced that Dexter had lost.
"No ten," Dexter mumbled.
The dealer drew a five. The people behind Dexter got excited. It had looked so bad for him. They went wild when the dealer dropped a ten on top of it.
Dexter had a four thousand dollar payoff. He added another five hundred to the bet and took the rest of the winnings off the table. He was now betting twenty-five hundred.
The next hand was a pair of tens which beat the dealers seventeen. The crowd had grown in size although Dexter was barely aware of it by now. He was focused on the cards in front of him.
Dexter took five hundred of those winnings and added it to the stack. He was now betting three thousand dollars. His heart nearly stopped when he hit a blackjack. The crowd cheered. He took four thousand and added five hundred to the stack. It was now a stack containing forty-five hundred dollars in chips.
Although he wasn't paying attention to the stacks of chips that were his 'bank', the crowd was talking about the pile of money he had made in this run. There were piles of green and black chips. He hadn't yet bothered to stack them so it was much more difficult to see how much money was there.
The winning streak came to an abrupt end when the dealer got a blackjack. The crowd sighed in disappointment. Dexter wanted to cry when that stack of lovely chips disappeared. His mood brightened considerably when he looked at his bank. There were a lot of chips there.
He picked up one of the hundred dollar chips and tossed to the dealer. "Here's a tip."
"Thanks," the dealer said.
Dexter put out two twenty-five dollar chips to start his run again. Seeing the small bet, the crowd rapidly disappeared. There wasn't going to be any excitement for a while.
Dexter spent a few minutes organizing the pile of chips in front of him. He was shocked by the number of hundred and five hundred dollar chips. He looked at them wondering how he was going to spend them. An idea came to mind and he smiled.
He lost the next five hands and then 'colored in' his chips. The dealer gave him two five thousand dollar chips, three thousand dollar chips, and a couple smaller denomination chips. The dealer's tray which had been looking pretty empty was now loaded with chips. Dexter stuffed his winnings into his pocket and headed towards the cashier's cage.
The woman looked up at him and said, "What can I do for you?"
"I need to cash these chips," Dexter answered as he handed over the small stack of chips.
She counted them out and said, "You'll need to fill out some tax forms, because of the amount. We have to take out twenty-eight percent for federal taxes."
"I take all the risks and the government siphons off the profit," Dexter said.
After Dexter finished filling out the forms, the cashier asked, "How do you want it?"
"I'd like four thousand in hundreds and a check for the rest," Dexter said.
"Wouldn't you prefer a debit card over a check?" the cashier asked.
"Sure, that's fine," Dexter said.
A few minutes later, Dexter walked away from the cashier's booth with four thousand dollars cash, and a shiny new debit card in his wallet. He headed over to the lobby.
Feeling nervous and embarrassed, Dexter headed over to the bell captain wanting to get some information. A twenty dollar bill was held tightly in a sweaty hand. He didn't feel very comfortable about what he was going to be doing next.
"I need some help," Dexter said nervously. He was pretty sure his face had turned beet red.
"What can I do for you?"
Dexter looked around to see if anyone could overhear him, in a low pitched voice that wouldn't carry far, he asked, "Where's a legal brothel?"
"There's nothing in Carson City. You'll have to get on highway 50 East to a town called Mound House. It is just across the county line. You'll see signs for the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Mound House. You can't miss it."
"Thank you," Dexter said. He handed the twenty over to the bell captain.
"Thank you," the man said.
Eight hours later, Dexter returned to the hotel three thousand dollars poorer, but a lot more relaxed. He had satisfied his curiosity about Asian, Hispanic, and red headed women. It might be strange to say, but they all had the same parts and they all basically did the same thing. It was an expensive lesson, at three thousand dollars, but he didn't care.
Much to his amazement, he didn't feel any guilt about the trip to the brothel, as regards to his marriage. As far as he was concerned, his marriage had ended with her texted message. Maybe going more than two years without sex affected his thinking on the matter, but he didn't care.
Exhausted by a long day at the gaming tables and an even longer night at the brothel, he went to his room and went to sleep. He slept for a solid twelve hours.
Upon waking, he went down for breakfast in one of the restaurants of the casino. He ordered the breakfast despite the fact that it was four in the afternoon. This was a far cry from waking at six and rushing through his morning regime to get to work.
Dexter ate while trying to plan the next few days. His principle reasons for coming to Carson City had been satisfied. He had gambled a little, and gotten his ashes hauled. The question was, what to do with his time, now. That wasn't an easy question to answer.
His bank account had swelled by eight hundred thousand dollars, the previous week. His lawyer had gotten twenty percent of the original million. The company lawyers who had handed him the settlement check, had hardly been able to contain their glee at having disposed of what they considered to be a nuisance suit.
He knew their glee would be short-lived. It would disappear totally, when Mark handed them the documents for the second lawsuit. Dexter wished he could watch the expressions that would cross their faces while they read the contents of the lawsuit. They weren't going to be happy when it came out that his former job was being misrepresented, after him having been improperly fired.
He expected his bank account to provide him with the money to do anything he wanted, for a long time. Of course, in the near term it would take a hit at tax time. For now, his financial situation looked pretty good. The question was what was he going to do with his time.
Dexter was basically an honest person. He felt that honesty had to originate with one's self. He took stock of his life. He was separated from his family. He didn't have a residence. He had no hobbies. He had no friends. He had no driving interests or desires to pursue. He had no need to work. There were not a lot of things in his life, other than a bunch of money.
He used to be an engineer, but honesty forced him to admit that he hadn't done any real engineering in more than ten years. He had always wanted to be an engineer. He used to like to tinker with things and understand how they worked. His youth had been spent taking apart and putting together things like clocks and engines.
He thought back to a day when he was about nine years old. He had taken apart the engine to the lawn mower. He felt like he had just discovered some important secret of the universe when he had figured out how the engine functioned. Each little part had a purpose. The form of each part was dictated by its function.
That sense of wonder about the world around him had disappeared over the years. He tried to trace back to the time when it started evaporating on him and couldn't. It was just gone. He doubted he could recapture it. Too much time had passed since he had looked around in wonder at the world, wishing he could figure out how it worked.
This whole nonsense about a service economy sickened him, since he felt that it somehow was part and parcel of separating people from what was important. Somehow, the principle casualty was the connection with the people around him.
Even the service in restaurants had changed over the course of his lifetime. When he was young, there had been a little conversation while orders were taken. He tried to remember the last time that a waiter or waitress had offered 'bon appetite' when delivering the food.
He remembered when water used to be provided without having to request it. Coffee and iced tea were refilled as many times as the customer wanted. Now, there was just one refill allowed, and the cups and glasses had shrunk in size. The concept of 'service' had changed, and he didn't like it.
He realized that even the nature of engineering had changed. It used to be that requirements were written in terms of what an item allowed people to do. Cars were designed to go faster because people wanted to go faster. Then, one day, the nature of the requirements seemed to change. Now the car would start dinging to get people to fasten their seat belts, because it was better for them to have their seat belts on. What the person wanted, wasn't important. What was important was get the 'peepul' to behave in a certain way.
Everything seemed to be for the greater good, but at a personal level it wasn't all that great. E-mail, which was to improve communications, had turned into a whip. When it took three days for a letter to go from one place to another, people expected to get an answer within a week or so. It gave people time to think about a response. With instant delivery of e-mail, people expected an answer within minutes. There was no pity for the poor sap who had to respond. The sender couldn't see that the recipient had e-mails from fifty different people all wanting immediate replies.
The cell phone was another good idea that turned bad. He had gotten his wife a cell phone so that she could call for help if she had a problem with her car. Now it had become her work phone and she was a slave to whoever called regardless of whether it was working hours or not.
For Dexter, the idea of a 'service economy' had transformed into the idea of a slave society. There weren't whips or iron shackles involved. Now, it was threats of unemployment. It wasn't work from sun up to sun down. It was work at all hours of the day ... and night.
People had rebelled against twelve hour days in factories. Now people were working eighteen hours a day, and not fighting it. People had fought to have 'Blue Laws' passed so that everyone was assured of having Sunday free. Perhaps the origin of the 'Blue Laws' was religious, but the family had benefited. All of those laws had been repealed, and the great loser was the family unit. Sunday became just another business day.
Now businessmen were lined up at airports on Sunday, to travel to distant business meetings so that they could come home late at night after those meetings were concluded. Spending six or eight hours traveling wasn't considered work. He could see how companies would react if their employees took a whole business day to travel to a meeting, spent the day at the meeting, and then used one to travel back. Oh, what a great loss in productivity that would be.
Slaves used to revolt when conditions were too bad. He didn't know how the slaves of modern society could revolt. A work stoppage? He didn't see how that was possible. He could see how a request for workers not to answer the phone would be taken. Who could sit and listen to a phone incessantly ringing without answering it? He couldn't and he didn't know anyone who could.
Although his thoughts meandered all over the place, there was a consistent theme through them all. He wanted to change the world from the cold harsh place it had become to something that was gentler and less hectic. He wanted work to take the proper role in people's lives. A job was meant to earn a living. It was not supposed to become a person's entire life.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of his waiter. The man asked, "Do you want anything more?"
"No," Dexter answered.
The waiter dropped the bill on the table and said, "Here's the bill."
"Could I ask you something?" Dexter asked.
"What is it?" the waiter asked.
"Do you like your job?" Dexter asked.
The waiter answered, "It's a fine job. Now if you don't mind, I've got thirty other tables. I can't stand here and talk all day."
"Thank you," Dexter said not wanting to interrupt the man.
Dexter watched the waiter going about his business. The man carried a tray loaded with food for two tables. Without saying a word, he dropped plates in front of his customers. It took him less than a minute to set out the food at two tables. He was impatient when someone couldn't make up their mind concerning what they wanted. He made it to a table when he could, but it was still a long time between visits. In short, he wasn't providing very good service, although he was clearly hard at work. For all of that, the waiter still expected to get a fifteen percent tip.
It dawned on Dexter that the man probably didn't even see the correlation between quality of service, and the tip. People just automatically added fifteen percent onto the charge slip without thinking about it.
"Something has to be done," Dexter said. "If this is a service society, then this society only deserves a penny tip."
Edited By TeNderLoin