Sketches from the Spanish Mustang by Benjamin X. Wretlind

Author:Benjamin X. Wretlind
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love, death, salvation, rebirth, cripple creek, art and literature
Publisher: Benjamin X. Wretlind

VERONICA

1

Veronica Draper's mother eyed the slot machine and sat down on a stool.

"It's due, damn it," Betty hissed. "The thing hasn't paid anything higher than $200 for over an hour."

"And you know this how?"

"Intuition." Betty raised her bottle of Budweiser to her ruby red lips as she fed the machine a hundred-dollar bill, took a sip then smacked it down on the spin button. The wheels of the Double Diamond machine spun away.

"You really like these machines, don't you? You beat the crap of out them every time, Mom."

"Shush, Veronica." Betty kept her blue eyes glued to the spinning wheels. "You're just jealous."

The wheels stopped from left to right. Betty looked at the cherry on the screen and sighed.

"Wow." Veronica didn't try to hide her false excitement. "Two dollars. At least you got your money back."

Betty shot her daughter a contemptuous glance. If there was one thing they genetically shared, it was the glances, the words spoken in muted stares and the off-handed, fleeting looks. Veronica appreciated that much, more so than the features they didn't pick from the same genetic pool: her mom's bushy eyebrows versus her own thinly trimmed ones, the small and slightly off-centered pug-like nose versus her own large schnoz of Romanesque proportions.

And then there were the boobs.

Christ, Veronica had been lucky.

Maybe it isn't so lucky, she suddenly thought. Her ample bosom had brought all the wrong men into her life, and now what? Divorced, mothering a troublesome teenager, nearly broke.

Betty slammed the beer bottle on the spin button again then touched the Plexiglas window over each spin wheel in succession.

"What does that accomplish, Mom?"

"Pay attention to your own machine," Betty said. "I have my systems."

"Indeed you do." Veronica let out a sigh and turned back to her machine. With a gently push of the spin button, she watched the wheels stop on three single bars. A small wave of excitement threatened to wash away the depressing sand castles she'd been building the last few months. The pay meter ran up her thirty dollar winnings with a rasping ding for each dollar.

"Can we move on to the quarters?" she asked. "These dollars are making me nervous."

"You've never been one for chances."

"I learned it from you."

Betty snorted and took a long draw of her beer. "I still have eighty-eight dollars. I'm not getting up until I win or lose."

"And when do you decide you've won?"

Betty turned slowly in her stool. Her blue eyes were glazed over with the fluid of three beers in one hour. Not for the first time, Veronica noticed a slur in her words. At first, it had been imperceptible, but as the day had drawn on, the slur had become more pronounced. It wasn't a drunken slur, though; she just sounded like her tongue was swollen.

When did she start drinking so much? Veronica thought.

"A win," Betty said, "as your father would say, is not a loss."

Veronica let a small smile creep to the edges of her lips. "He was profound."

Betty let out a snort then looked at Veronica's machine.

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