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self-conscious about someone having witnessed her losing money, like an alcoholic who wants to drink at home alone. And she had known, sitting next to Mark, that they were the same, both addicts. The fake nonchalance of just one more spin until all the money’s gone. In San Francisco, during some gambling lows she’d sold her clothes, left bills unpaid, written bad checks and gotten money however else she could to be able to stay in the dark casino, pushing a button mindlessly and chain-smoking.
    She’d started gambling by playing blackjack. She’d sit at the table and talk to the other players and they rooted each other on to beat the dealer. For as long as she was on a lucky streak and the chips were piling up in her favor everyone was a family of shipwrecked comrades. Her skin became thinner with each hour, until a single drop of alcohol spilt on her wrist could make her feel drunk. She was numb and wired at the same time. She could earnestly think she could fuck and marry everyone sitting at the table around her when she was winning. Even the dealers were on her side. It’s not the dealer’s money. The dealers wanted her to win so she would throw ridiculous tips at them. The dealers were gambling too, when they weren’t working. But when her chips were gone and there wasn’t any money left in her pocket to get more, and she’d already done the long walk of shame to the cashier booth or the ATM until there was no money left in those places, either, she would have to wait until midnight, when in the bank’s mind it was a new day and her withdrawal limit rolled over. She’d stand behind the other hardcore gamblers, at first shifting her weight from foot to foot, trying to look casual, and then she would stop trying to look casual. She just waited in line with the others with pissed-off or scared expressions.
    But there was something about dog track casinos especially that beckoned a certain type of hardcore gambler. No one strolls through the parking lot of a dog track casino; they’re rushing to find a place where they can be alone and push a button, or push a pile of chips on a lucky number, or get teary when an ace is turned over in front of them like a healthy baby. Once, when Theo was hurrying to get inside a dog track casino, she passed a flaming car in the parking lot. The fire department hadn’t arrived yet. Who knew if anyone had even called the fire department; she didn’t. She barely slowed down to double check over her shoulder to make sure her truck was parked far enough away that if the flaming car blew up, hers wouldn’t catch fire from the sparks. There were a few people around her, walking past it like zombies too, barely turning their heads to look at the flames. It seemed like all the gamblers were under time constraints or were lying to someone in order to be there. Their kids thought they were out buying groceries or their husbands and wives had been asleep when they had slowly coaxed money from their wallets. And when there was no money left to steal, they set their own cars on fire for the insurance money. They could just light a match, and while it burned, ask the cocktail waitress for a complimentary soda or beer and try to win a little something at the blackjack table.
    During the last year in San Francisco, when her drinking really took off, she would take time off from the Party Store and take the bus to the casino every day. She started to recognize other people gambling at the slot machines. At first, she was winning. She was getting free drinks and free money. She felt like she had figured out some great mystery; it was so easy to win a couple hundred dollars. But soon she wasn’t able to get home with the money. She thought, if I can win a couple hundred then I can win a couple hundred more, and then she found she would stay until she’d lost all her winnings, or if by some stroke of luck she did make it out the door with the