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money, then she lost it and more the next day when she returned. Theo wore lucky dice underwear when she went to the casino and a lucky royal flush belt buckle. And in the hours she sat next to other gamblers she’d learn she wasn’t the only one wearing special outfits or a piece of jewelry from a dead relative as a charm.
    Once Theo sat next to an old woman with short, dyed-black hair who was wearing a leopard leotard and black tights under a giant black parka. Her tiny, wrinkled face was dwarfed behind an extra-large white Styrofoam cup of coffee. She was smoking and she reached over to light Theo’s cigarette for her.
    â€œYesterday, I won,” she said, “and when I win, then I wear the same thing again the next day. Because it’s lucky,” she said, waving her hand over her leotard.
    When Theo was losing she didn’t want to talk to anyone. But she couldn’t resist the tale of the lucky leotard. The woman looked a little deeper into Theo’s eyes and told her that she wore a diaper to the casino, a friend told her about it, because that way she could drink as much coffee as she wanted and never get up from the slot machine to pee. Theo wanted to ask if she wore the same diaper, too. After that, two things happened. One, Theo felt much better about her gambling problem because she didn’t wear a diaper. And two, she became obsessed with staring at the other gamblers’ asses, trying to figure out which ones seemed unnecessarily puffy or crinkly.
    About a month before she decided to leave San Francisco Theo had found herself chain-smoking and gambling for sometimes fourteen hours straight, her brain cracking from the barnyard sounds of slot machine animals. She went from roulette to blackjack to the slots. She stopped playing roulette because money went too fast, so she moved on to blackjack for better odds. She’d sit at someone’s blackjack table drinking free gin and tonics and playing cards. She’d drink and drink and almost never feel drunk, just heavy and depressed. She fell in love with the kind eyes of the dealers.
    Once a dealer looked at her and said, “Are you going to be here my whole shift?”
    Theo didn’t realize she’d already been playing cards for eight hours. She couldn’t leave, she was on such a winning streak that day. When the dealer’s shift was over Theo stayed, and with the new dealer she managed to lose everything.
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    On the way back to her room Theo scanned the carpet for money, a quarter even. She found she was religious in casinos: If God loved her he’d let her find a quarter on the carpet, and she would use that quarter to try just one more time, drop it into a slot machine and hit the jackpot. But, deep down she knew no one hit the jackpot on a quarter they found on the rug. Ever.
    When she opened the door to the motel room, Cary Grant looked up from where she was sleeping in a tight circle at the end of the bed. Theo was relieved that the dog hadn’t had some kind of freak-out in her absence.
    â€œHi,” she said, sitting down next to her.
    The dog watched her. Theo felt exhausted and lay down with the light on, fully dressed, her feet hanging off the edge of the bed. A flare of anger surged through her at her stupidity for losing two hundred and forty dollars. She got up and fished a bright yellow Café Bustelo can out of her bag. She took the lid off and removed the wad of perfectly organized bills, counting the money as Cary Grant watched. She had seven hundred and ten dollars. She counted out two hundred and forty dollars and put it in her pocket. All she would have to do is go back to the roulette wheel and put the entire sum on black or red. She had a fifty-fifty chance of winning her losses back with a single spin. Very gently, she laid her hand on the dog’s side.
    â€œI’ll be right back,” she told Cary Grant.
    When she rose the dog followed her to the door and stood