by Keith Keller

Harmony Jones wound her way thru the pit, automatically sweeping her eyes over the men standing or sitting at tables gambling, their towers of chips stacked neatly in front of them. She did this out of habit; she had already chosen her mark. Although a stunning middle-aged woman she attracted neither the attention of the pit boss nor the casino’s security cameras. She was in perfect accord with her environment, looking like any b

eautiful Las Vegas woman checking out the action in the pit, maybe looking for a table, or killing time while her husband gambled.
 
Milton was riding a winning streak and had a messy pile of black chips in front of him that Harmony guessed totaled close to four thousand dollars. There were four other players at the table, pretty drunk, betting on intuition; that is, giving their money to the casino. Milton’s play was better. Harmony stood watching for a while; standing close enough to Milton that he could smell the heavy gardenia perfume she wore. When the player next to Milton gave up his place Harmony slid onto the empty stool, brushing her hip against Milton’s and twisting in a way that made her soft linen blouse pull open to expose impressive cleavage. Milton’s reaction to Harmony’s time honored dance was as ancient as the dance itself. He was hooked.
 
Harmony made several bad twenty-five dollar bets, complaining to her self as she lost that she didn’t really understand the game. Soon Milton was helping her with her bets and she began to win some. Moving closer to him so she could better hear his advice, she was soon sitting in front of a major portion of the chip pile. After a while an observer might have difficulty knowing just whose chips were whose.  Harmony Jones suddenly gave out a little gasp. They had been gambling a half-hour.

“What time is it?” she asked.
It was four thirty in the afternoon.
“Oh god, my husband is going to kill me,” Harmony said.
With this she stood up and swept half the chips spread in front of her and Milton into her large leather bag, kissed Milton on the cheek, thanked him, and left. Milton stood watching as she strode toward the exit. Later he would wonder what he might have done to stop her. None of the scenarios he imagined played well for his ego. He remembered the feel of her hip against his.
 “The casino would have gotten it anyway,” he thought.
 

Flat Freddy was in a foul mood, which meant his flatulence was acting up. Flat Freddy’s roommates Arnold and Tony were also in poor humor. As Flat Freddy would readily tell you any stressful situation would bring on “an attack.” The cause of all this stress and flatulence would not be resolved until Friday. It was Tuesday.
 
It all started on a Saturday night when Flat Freddy set a new personal record at the craps table clearing two hundred thousand dollars. Of course by morning he had lost it all. As Tony explained it; “Flat Freddy will leave the table only when he owns the casino or is tapped out.”
 
Flat Freddy was not a graceful loser despite years of practice. After he made his last losing throw he tried unsuccessfully to tip the craps table over, his round body in a deep squat, gut wrenching with effort, spittle spraying onto the table, terrible noises coming out of both ends of Flat Freddy. On the way out of the casino he pissed on the front door. A pit boss stopped several security guards moving in Flat Freddy’s direction saying “leave him alone, he paid two hundred thousand dollars for that piss.”
 
But it was not the two hundred big ones that had Flat Freddy in such a funk, although indirectly one might say it was. Flat Freddy had recovered by Sunday night from his gambling loss after a good afternoon’s sleep and a shower. It was when he decided to vacuum the living room that things went bad. To most, a broken vacuum cleaner would not be the end of the world, but to Flat Freddy, a card carrying clean freak, it was catastrophic. There was no money to fix the vacuum until Friday. They were all broke because Flat Freddy had bullied both of them into giving him all of their money so he could keep playing his winning streak, now turned losing streak. To do this he had gone into chip hustler mode, his primary means of support. As I understand it there are two schools of chip hustling with a few variations. The most common form, the reader will be familiar with, is in the form of one Harmony Jones. The second method consists of displaying outrageous indignation at the mere thought that you might not help the hustler in his or her time of need. The main element in this approach is lots of yelling. It has to be seen and heard to be believed.
 
Now Arnold and Tony were bringing bar food home from their jobs and hoping the car would not run out of gas. Tony tried getting Freddy to go out and hustle but Flat Freddy pointed out that they had a gas problem and cruising the casinos for a likely mark was out of the question. While Flat Freddy spent all day drinking and watching the Playboy Channel Arnold and Tony tried sweeping but to no avail. They lived on the edge of the Las Vegas desert and sweeping only stirred up the dust. Finally Flat Freddy got so annoyed with their vain attempts at house keeping he hauled his fat flatulent self out of his easy chair and yelled, “Take me to Sears!”
“Oh no,” said Tony, “I hate this shit.”
“What shit,” asked Arnold?”
“Come on, it’s Thursday,” said Tony to Flat Freddy, ignoring Arnold, “We’ll have money tomorrow night.”
“What shit?” repeated Arnold who had never actually seen Flat Freddy in action, he had only heard.
“You’ll see, you drive him,” answered Tony. “I get too nervous. I’m staying here. But keep your distance once you are in Sears. Act like you don’t know him.”
 
Once in the department store Flat Freddy made a beeline for the small appliances department. He spotted a nice Kenmore with twelve attachments. He picked up his pace to a slow trot and then a dead run. He dropkicked the Kenmore into ladies sportswear following it as it sailed through the air. Sliding to his knees as the vacuum landed in front of him he grabbed it on the bounce and slammed it hard on the floor three times; bam bam bam, all the while screaming how he had brought it in for repairs three times since buying it a month ago and it still did not work. By now he really needed to catch his breath so he started sobbing while security guards surrounded him for a second time in a week, this time hands on guns. Having caught his breath he raised his head and let out a dreadful wail.
“I paid…” a quick look down at the price tag, “five hundred and forty five dollars for this piece of crap and it still doesn’t work.”
Flat Freddy let his head drop to his chest and for good measure put his hand to his heart and started wheezing
 
The floor manager wanted only one thing: to get this maniac out of his store. He told one of the sales clerks to get Flat Freddy a new vacuum cleaner. When it arrived Flat Freddy handed it to one of the security guards to carry out to the car.
“Holy shit,” said Arnold wiping sweat from his forehead as they walked through the parking lot. By six that evening the floors in Tony’s, Arnold’s and Flat Freddy’s house were spotless.

Darling had been a chip hustler for some years before she met Harry. Harry was as handsome and rich as Darling was beautiful. No one knew if it was love, lust or money. Probably even Darling and Harry didn’t know, but at first sight Harry did know he wanted Darling and Darling definitely wanted Harry. He set them up on the top floor of one of Las Vegas’s best hotels. They were happy for some years but then Harry started stepping out and Darling started doing some heavy drugs and drinking too much. They parted slowly without anger or even knowing why, as people do now and then. She started using even more drugs and at times was not too sure of where or even who she was. She took to sometimes pulling her dress down to show her breasts while sitting at a bar. She was Darling and everyone from the bartenders to the bus boys looked after her.
 
One morning Harmony Jones and Flat Freddy were having breakfast at a nice outdoor café, enjoying a morning desert breeze after a night in the casinos. Darling was sitting at the next table with a big chinchilla coat draped on the back of her chair finishing up a plate of huevos rancheros. The waiter brought her check. Looking vaguely perplexed and moving in slow motion, she started looking for money in her bag, and coming up with nothing, smiled at the waiter, and shrugged her shoulders. The waiter looked pissed. ‘A young know nothing from no where’ thought Flat Freddy as he and Harmony watched the scene. Darling, still in slow motion, dragged the coat off the back of her chair and said “Here, take this.”

“Whoa,” said Flat Freddy, “gimme that check. And you, keep your coat, it will look better on you than on him.”
 
A few months later Flat Freddy was sitting at his favorite casino bar drinking on the house after once again losing a small fortune. He had ridden high, sure, absolutely sure the streak would last forever, only to crash, leaving his pockets weighted down with only small change. It was not the money that was bothering him, nor was it a broken appliance. He had broken a cardinal rule; do not gamble the night before rent day.  Arnold and Tony would cover him, but it was humiliating. It hurt his pride. He sat alone at the bar brooding, staring down into his drink. Then he heard the rustle of someone climbing on to a barstool. It was Darling, looking in that bar light as beautiful as she ever did.
“You sure are a gloomy sight,” she said. “What happened, someone run over your armadillo?”
 Flat Freddy smiled, “Nothing I can’t handle. It’s a temporary problem.”
“Tapped out, huh,” she guessed. Then she slid off the stool and walked in the direction of the pit. For Darling it was like shaking an apple tree and picking up the apples, as simple as that. In fifteen minutes she returned holding her white dress out in front of her. It was full of chips. She poured them on to the bar in front of Flat Freddy.
“Thanks for the eggs,” she said.
 
I have not been to Vegas in thirty years. People say it’s different now.