Las Vegas Law is not just about gavels. It is not just about court rooms, warrants, and suits. Although the kind of law I’m talking about here does involve suits. The suit of hearts, the suit of clubs, the suit of spades, and the suit of diamonds, which is what everyone hopes to buy with their winnings, but the law of Lady Luck might have something else in mind for them. Though there are the kind of people who do seem to just make it no matter what game they play or what machine they put their money into. It could be one of those glass and metal machine with the big nasty claw and the joystick to drive it with a million little stuffed trinkets at the bottom to choose from. Justine was one of those kind of people. She was Lady Luck it would seem.
I met her when I was working the tables at a big time casino in the eighties. I love that era because for several nostalgic reasons. Keifer Sutherland’s hair in The Lost Boys. Sean Astin’s asthma in The Goonies. The leg warmers that always kept falling down my legs and caught on things, like my coffee table with the three cup stains that formed a strange kind of trinity on the pine wood that was stained red. I also miss mood rings and old school Madonna. I miss a lot of things because I was so busy working the tables, I never had a chance to really enjoy them. I think that’s why people are missing so much these days, and I’m not just talking about leg warmers, though maybe a little.
Justine taught me about the kinds of things she missed. She missed out paying the mortgage on her home and then missed out on her home. And since home is where the heart is, she had to get her heart back through playing a suit of them, and the three others two, though the suit of hearts is her absolute favorite. She didn’t win her old home back, but did win her back through the games she played at my table. I won something too from the times she came and threw down some cards with the others who come and go through Vegas : I won the ability to stop missing out on the things that matter, the small things like stories from strangers sitting across a table from you.