They Called Her Jewels

I couldn’t tell if the light shone down on her or emitted out of her. Either way it had to be an illusion, otherwise it would mean that either there was a skylight cut above her head, through twenty stories of hotel, or God was shining a light on her to announce an angel come to save me. Personally, and after looking back on it, it was probably the fact that she was the only woman dealer in the dark, sunken baccarat pit among the other penguins in shiny tuxedoes. It was the culmination of a series of surreal events in the past six weeks – three months really, if you don’t count leaving five years of college behind to become a bartender in Vegas.

There I was standing in line at Caesars Palace, résumé in hand, sporting my best 80s clothes, clean and pressed. I had been working as a bartender in a large hotel in Albuquerque for a couple of years before I summoned my courage to try the big time. My scholarship for engineering disappeared in the first semester almost as fast as the beers and the names of the girls I had already forgotten. Architectural school had thrown me when I found out that my first four years served only to teach me how to draw and make a deadline. That was when I thought to try Vegas.

Vegas had always been Nirvana for all of us who lived in our huge small town. Colorado was prime for skiing and the ocean of California was great, but no city in the Southwest or on the coast spoke to us here like Vegas. This time was not too long after the Rat Pack had made the place famous and before the city became a parody of itself. There were still plenty of people working on the strip who could tell stories about being whisked away to Alaska for a couple of weeks of drunken hunting and fishing with a select group of employees to cook, serve and entertain the stars. I was a gnat to the liquid lights.

As I got closer to the window, my résumé getting a little damp from the sweat of my palm, I began to hear foreign words like Tam card, Sherriff’s card, and union. Didn’t unions go out in the thirties with Cagney and Brando? What in the world is a health card? Look at me, I’m twenty-three years old and looking good. I can do the job. I have the résumé.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t even leave my list of accomplishments because I needed a referral. Damn, maybe this was a mistake. I had come to this town to work at the best casino on the strip, and only at the best casino on the strip. I had thrown it all down on black and white. I could either go back home with my tail between my legs, or figure something out.

Forty-five minutes later I had a job at a downtown casino that did business without the stranglehold of a union. “No one gets to start as a bartender in this town,” Nick said, a cigarette bouncing up and down as he schooled me with a smirk on his face. “It wouldn’t matter if you owned a bar in Albuquerque. You’d still have to start as a bar back. It’s even worse in the union houses. You’ll wait a year on the extra board before you even get a full time slot. Two years after that, before you go back on the board as a relief bartender, after you do the hundred hours of training and pay your dues month in and month out, then you might get a shot at being a Vegas bartender.”

Nick was a drunk who worked the pine so he could get women and be close to his favorite past time, the juice. He could also play a mean game of pool. He owned a Balabushka and taught me how to drink bourbon at ten in the morning after we got off the graveyard shift. We’d walk across the street to Binion’s, park it at the bar across from the craps pit and order up a couple rounds. It was the first time that I ever felt like a star. Nick and Mike were friends. We would pound five rounds of shots with beer chasers before Nick would get a chit to sign. That was it, all of that drink for a signature and a fat tip. Then we’d go shoot some stick at a local dive before I’d cycle home and crash until it was time to ride back down to the Four Queens and the French Quarter bar – my bar.

I learned a lot in a little bit of time and Nick would let me serve the guests whenever he thought he could make time with a woman. Steaming mats and watching the horrors of people as they chased their dollars down the throats of one armed bandits wasn’t all that bad because I was part of something that had a history, a history with a Tom Jones look alike and a fake package singing to old ladies from Duluth. After a while it got to the point that I could walk over to Binion’s and sit down in front of Mike and sign my own tab.

I was sitting with my back to him one morning when Mike said the words that almost stopped my heart. I could see the propositions in the angled mirrors mounted on the ceiling and I was learning how to play craps from the shouts and the barks of the croupiers. “Didn’t you say that you wanted to work at Caesar’s,” I heard Mike remark from behind me. I swallowed hard and turned around.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Well, maybe today would be a good day to go down to the union house and get registered. Talk to Cliff and tell him that Mike sent you.”

I felt like Scorsese was going to walk around from the pit and say, “Cut. Print it!”

Was this really happening? Mike didn’t need to tell me twice. Three hours later I was standing in front of Ken Prizzi, the F&B Director at Caesars. I was told to report directly to him from Human Resources. I remember walking through the pool area that was an exact replica of Randolph Hearst’s pool. I had been there as a kid with my parents on a summer vacation, and now I was walking in the scorching heat surrounded by Goddesses – that’s what the half-dressed cocktail waitresses were called – on my way to see the big boss.

I had no idea how impossible it was that this was even happening, but that’s what comes from being naïve and green. You’re too young to believe it couldn’t happen, and maybe too stupid to realize that it shouldn’t be happening. And it only got better when I had finally found my way through the catacombs of velvet carpet hallways and dark filigreed wood to Ken’s office. I stood there at the open door, waiting for him to acknowledge me. He sat behind a big desk with paperwork everywhere, pictures of famous people he had posed with, and bottles of wine and crystal glasses.

“Get in here, kid.” He was totally grey but he didn’t look as feeble as his apparent age would afford him. His voice was gruff, probably from too many years of highballs and menthols. Finally he looked up at me. Up and down his eyeballs went without uttering a word. I was wearing baggy, heavy cotton dress pants with pockets on the thighs and a pencil-thin leather belt. Luckily, my shirt was starched and shining white, otherwise his grin might have exploded into cardiac arrest.

“I don’t know how you did it, kid, but you’re working at the Palace Court. No extra board. Full time. Report to Jacques, the Maitre d’. He’ll tell you what to do.” Then he looked down and went back to work.

“Um, where is the Palace Court?” I ventured.

“Find it!” he shouted, not looking up from his desk.

It was the last time I felt like a tourist in Vegas, looking around with big eyes trying to find the exit, a clock, a drinking fountain, sanity. I took a golden elevator to its limit of one flight, a red velvet circular stair case wrapping around it like a call girls skirt almost covering her treasure. At the top I walked out into a peach colored lounge, thirty-foot ceilings with white wooden lattice work overlooking the pools. There was a semi-circular bar made of peach brass and a white baby grand piano behind it. Home. And beyond it was an even larger circular room with a glass rotunda, more lattice work, and a full size tree in the middle of it. Three rows of tables wrapped around the tree, literally gold flatware on the table with gold rimmed crystal ware on the tables. The bank.

Jacques was the quintessential French Maitre d’ in the transcendent French restaurant. It was either, “’El-ooh mah-budee,” for the men, or “’El-ooh mah-luv” for the ladies. “Welcome to the Palace Court.”

No damn slot machines up here. No video poker cut into the flat of the bar. You needed a two million dollar credit line just to open the private casino that waited patiently next to where I would work. Nothing but table games in there nestled behind the peach chiffon and golden metal lattice, a cage where only a few rare animals ever wanted to get into. No more than a few whales ever played in there. Some kind of lascivious echolocation announced to the select houses when they were in town. Even if they didn’t stay with us, a full crew of dealers and Goddesses would be called in, made to wait at attention, coolly ignoring the buffet table that was restocked every two hours whether anyone took the bait or not. What’s a few thousand dollars of lobster and caviar when a big fish could stand to lose millions on a weekend of forty hours of straight gambling?

It was explained to me later, by her, that these men made of money played the way they did because it was the only thing in their world that they couldn’t control. And even here they were allowed to break some rules. Touch a card downstairs and out you go. Up here they could bend the cards’ corners up and up and up. What did a hand here and there mean? Sometimes it was one man playing all six positions, fifty thousand a slot. Sure, throw him a bone every once in a while to keep him satisfied. The house is going to get its man.

I learned wine from a Master, ate the food of a Michelin man, and watched action figure lookalikes on fight nights with license plates hanging around their necks, their names spelled out in diamonds with race horse women on their arms. My meals were lobsters hanging off the plate and a bottle of wine from the rack, “…just as long as it’s less than forty dollars a bottle on the list.” Not too many of those on a given page, though. The list was a book of nine hundred wines, the best in the world. I drank Louis-trey when the Arab prince wanted a new bottle, throwing the open one into the garbage and demanding it to be untouched.

Nobody paid up here, they lost. Well, there was the fifteen percent riff-raff who actually had to buy their way up here. It’s amazing how quickly one can get used to the unreal. It got to where I craved grilled cheese in the horrible employee cafeteria where all the regular people ate. I knew I was still me, but I had the golden keys. What could I possibly do after this? Everything had to be downhill, right?

So there I stayed, dressed like a ships mate in an outfit even more ridiculous than my puffy pants and Don Johnson belt. I worked there three years and never knew more than ten people I worked with out of the hundreds and hundreds who came and went every day. Vegas is a gold veneered garbage disposal, eating humans as waste and growing larger with every hopper full.

“Step right up, folks,” the carnies used to say at the state fair when I was a kid hoping to win a kewpie doll, a pop bottle stretched out, or a gold fish with a toss of a ping pong ball. Vegas was a long way from the state fair, but the carnies somehow worked there too. No one asked you to step up though. People flocked from all over this great country and pale blue marble to throw their money down, and they actually thanked you for the chance to lose.

I walked from bar to bar in that place, Cleopatra’s bosoms hanging down over my head, the Discus a circular buzz saw tearing the tourists to bits. But it was the Olympic bar next to the baccarat pit where we had to go to pick up the keys to start work. It was the hub, the center of attention, the place Jimmy Nine used to work when you needed a reservation and the real power called juice to get you in. Imagine, a maitre d’ for a bar. That was when Shecky, Frank, or Sammy could be found in person any night of the week, wasted.

This is where I found myself, able to walk behind the bar, without permission, to pick up the keys to my life. I’d linger and imagine what it was like. There was still a house phone with a cord that could reach to any Lilliputian table. I’d strike up an absent conversation with someone behind the bar so I could stand there and imagine what it would be like to be here when the sequins and smoke could blind you inside of ten minutes. And if it wasn’t the starlight to cross your eyes it was the river of money that flowed like metallic white water, assaulting your senses to the point of distraction.

The baccarat pit stood next to the Olympic, the cool ease of the tuxedoes waiting to welcome you at only a thousand a hand, a hundred during the off hours. There was no metal here, only the gliding clicking of rakes and markers, soft voices telling stories that could only be heard with a year’s salary on the line. And then there she was, bigger than the game, larger than all of this. The black ceilings, the million lights, the bells and the whistles of losers winning, nothing could distract me anymore.

Her blonde hair kinked and showered down onto her black tux, illuminating the pit like her ruby lips and dazzling smile lit up the game. No longer did any of the false glamour impress me. No longer did Caesar and Cleopatra with their entourage engage me as they passed, all eyes smiling at them. Only she existed for me. Each day I would come early to pick up the keys and watch her, watch her command the game, command my attention.

I thought she never looked up from her work, working the table and working the whales. How could a titan like this ever notice a minnow like me staring at her from the shadows? Six weeks I watched. I had no illusions. I was just captivated. And then she looked up for what I thought was the first time. She looked right at me and smiled. That was it. I was ready now. Nothing I could ever experience would get any better than that. She was a woman seventeen years my senior and I was a boy, now ready to die, swearing sacred oaths as he went that his life was now full.

At Caesars Palace in the Palace Court I thought I had made it, had become something more than I was. In a way I had. It just turned out that it didn’t amount to much because here I was again, silly outfit and sweaty palms, a black cup of coffee in a cracked porcelain mug, fluorescent lights of the employee cafeteria humming above, the smile that would change my life sitting across from me.