The Experience Pt.1

This is part of a fictional series of stories based on stuff that I've seen working on Fremont Street. Just think of it like that guy who wrote all those memoirs and got exposed and had to apologize on Oprah, except I'm telling you that it's bullshit at the beginning. I embellished.

I stood in the elevators with two other people cascading down the employee parking garage when one of them said, “sure is eerie riding this elevator knowing somebody jumped off the top of the garage yesterday.” The woman was in her early fifties, wearing a dealer's outfit of slacks and a vest over a button up. Her hair looked like it had been sprayed into the same mold for twenty years straight. It stood in perfect alignment like a Spartan Phalanx, or freshly mowed blades of uniform grass.

Personally, if I were to jump off a building, it would be double digits in floors. I'm just saying, seven stories sounds like if you landed the right way you might just end up disfigured for the rest of your life. I swear I've seen a television special where a girl was skydiving with a baby in her womb she didn't know about and crashed to the ground and the baby survived. I don't want to take my chances with anything less than fourteen, fifteen stories.

This was something like my second week working on Fremont. The Experience. A microcosm of tortured souls. Alcoholics, homeless, street performers, power hungry bosses, prostitutes, all lurking around every corner. Not to mention all of the inconsiderate tourists that don't look where they're walking.

As I exited the elevator I surveyed the area where the man committed suicide the day before. It didn't look clean, none of the pavement downtown looks clean. But it certainly didn't look how I expected it to look; ie blood stains, perhaps a dislodged finger that nobody bothered to pick up. The guy worked there for something like eighteen years. And that was it, even his blood stain was gone after one day. Forgotten. We can't have that kind of bloodshed on display so close to the entertainment.

I think the guy was a porter, which for those who aren't familiar with the casino terminology, is kind of like a janitor. Some tough guy has too many shots at the bar, pukes all over the floor, and who cleans it up? The bartender, right? Nope, the porter. Haven't you ever wondered what happened to all those cups you left on the floor or near a machine when you were drunk and didn't care? Some old guy making a decent wage who has been cleaning up after drunk idiots for eighteen years cleaned it up. Clearly we see where that can lead.

I had a long day at work. Dealing blackjack can be brutal. My table is near the craps tables where every five minutes or so some annoying group of girls yells, “WOOOOO!!!” Blackjack can be a very fast game where people lose a lot of money before they realize it. People are always getting angry, sometimes at each other because one guy doesn't know how to play right. And people are drunk. They think I miscount and they yell. The pit boss reviews the tape and they get a free meal even though I didn't miscount.

“Stay after for a drink?” Rick, the craps dealer asked me.

“No, I'm broke man.”

“The first one's free, you get a free post-shift drink,” he said.

That's a thing? No wonder these people get stuck here. I declined anyways, I had not adjusted to being up so late yet, and I just wanted to go to sleep. Two-thirty in the morning would eventually become the norm for me, but at this point it was foreign. At two-thirty in the morning there aren't many people left on the streets. The performers have retired their costumes for the night, and most people have either overdosed or passed out by that time. It caught me off guard when a guy asked me if I was driving home. As opposed to what? Walking?

“Yeah, I'm driving. Why?” I responded.

“Do you think I could get a ride man? I'm desperate. It's just down a few blocks, I lost my friends. I could really use some help man, please,” he said. He didn't look threatening. Smaller than me, and certainly less sober. Although I'm not sure what he was high on.

“Sure,” is what an idiot would say. And that's what I said. The guy seemed genuinely in need of help. We walked to my car and he thanked me a few times.

“Do any drugs?” he asked. Not the kind of question you normally get within the first five minutes of a conversation anywhere else.

“Not really, no. Weed sometimes. Why?”

“I think I got some at the crib I can give you for the ride. I just really appreciate it man,” he reiterated.

“I'm good man. Don't worry about it.”

He pointed me the direction to go and off we went. He looked paranoid. He grabbed his face.

“I think my jaw is broken,” he said.

“What? Seriously?”

“Me and my homie got into it with this dude over his girl. He hit me first, but we lit him up real good after that. Dude's face was messed up.”

Something I would have liked to had been informed of before I let the guy into my car. I think he was full of shit. I haven't been around too many broken jaws, but I'm pretty sure he would have been in severe pain and his speech would have been messed up. Either way, he was a dick.

“Shit. See the cop cars over by 7-11? We've got to keep driving a little bit. Go down the road a little further,” he said. Is this where I get lured into the middle of the ghetto and get robbed? I watched to make sure he wasn't itching towards some sort of weapon. I had to take control of this situation.

“Dude I'm going to throw my hat out the window,” he said.

“No, don't do that.”

“They might recognize the black hat,” he shivered out of frustration.

“It's going to look suspicious if you throw a hat out the window. You're being paranoid. Nobody's looking at my car. My shit is registered, my brake lights work, I have no warrants...just tell me where to let you out.”

“Over there I guess.”

Never again would I give somebody a ride anywhere near Fremont.