Playing Against the House by James D. Walsh

Author:James D. Walsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

On Sunday afternoons I worked with Vanessa. Tall and buxom, Vanessa glided about like there wasn’t enough luxury in this hard world. She called customers baby whether they tipped her or not. She confidently strutted around, unhurried, hypnotizing men into ordering drinks. Once I watched her kiss a regular on the cheek ten times in a row, each time he dropped a $10 bill on the bar for her. He was paying her back for past-due tips or a bet she had won; the kisses on the cheek were just her way of sweetening the deal. Colette worked one of her first shifts with Vanessa and we both agreed she would make a great leader. She also happened to be best friends with a Local 355 staff organizer. However, the organizer was hesitant to sully their friendship by pushing Vanessa. Also, Vanessa’s brother-in-law was a manager in the food and beverage department, which put her in a precarious position. Still, I liked working with her because she knew everything that was going on at the casino. “See that woman there, the one drunk at the bar? She won ten thousand dollars. Downhill ever since. Every two weeks she spends her entire sixteen-hundred-dollar paycheck here. She was cheating on her husband with tons of guys here and more at Calder and Hard Rock.”

Before my afternoon shifts ended, the cocktail waitresses working the afternoon would be relieved by the night shift. More often than not, Grace worked evenings after picking up her two children from school and dropping them off at home. In her forties, Grace was older than most of the other mothers with young kids. She would arrive at work with all the excitement and fatigue of a mother engulfed by her children’s schedules. After cleaning and arranging the cocktail waitresses’ workstation next to the bar, she would open her compact and use the mirror to fix her eyeliner. She was white with golden-brown hair aided by hair spray. She had the energy and toned figure of someone much younger. Grace patrolled the floor taking care of her customers in her maternal way, bringing bottles of water to customers who hadn’t asked for anything and giving advice to the other waitresses and customers seated at the bar.

Like Lena, Grace detested Sally, the head of the food and beverage department, and claimed that the feeling was mutual.

“That woman has it out for me,” Grace said. “She feels threatened or something.”

Grace had worked in Atlantic City and knew the casino business. Her hope for a better job, she told me, was in the prospect of a bigger casino industry in South Florida.

“I’ve got one foot out the door. As soon as Caesars comes, I’m out.”

There was always talk of the casino industry growing in South Florida, big Vegas-style palaces on Miami Beach. Who would go to the desert if they could do the same thing next to the warm blue waters of Miami Beach? Bigger casinos, better jobs, lights in the fog.

Lena, Vanessa, and Grace seemed to be the strongest candidates among the cocktail waitresses.

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