A nephew of my barber who had recently driven to Atlantic City told him that as he drove into town—while looking in the darkened windows of the pawn shops and motels on the city’s ground level—he decided that rather than stay at an affordable hotel and gamble with the modest amount of money he had put aside for that purpose, he would stay in the most opulent room his credit card could gain access to at the Borgata, and then rely on his luck at the craps table to pay the eventual bill. He truly admired the polarity of Atlantic City and found a sharp, almost painful, excitement, in the city’s constant tension, an excitement unequalled by even the decadence of Las Vegas, which he had visited once for a long weekend, but he was so bored by its endless pleasure and its adult-imitation child wonder that he vowed never to step foot in the state of Nevada for the rest of his life. Less than half an hour after entering Atlantic City, my barber’s nephew found himself at a craps table. As the night went on, he roamed from table to table, casino to casino, sometimes making money, but more often making new friends. He had rolled dice at so many different tables that he couldn’t imagine that there was one in the whole city that he hadn’t visited. By sunrise, he had done well, but he still hadn’t reached his goal of covering the cost of his suite at the hotel. Eventually, though, he told my barber that he met a man with a corporate card who told him not to worry about the room, he would have it comped—and the man did just that with a quick call to the concierge. He then invited my barber’s nephew and several young women back to his own suite at the Borgata for mimosas and scrambled eggs. They all followed him to the suite and settled into the plentiful couches in his sitting room. He passed around mimosas and proposed a toast to Fortune. The young women drank, but the barber’s nephew did not, as he did not like champagne. Quickly the laughter and chatter in the room drew to silence. The young man looked at each of the women and each of them sat stiff and empty-eyed; it did not take him long to realize that they were all dead. He looked for his host, who was gone, but, as he surveyed the sitting room, he realized that no less than a half dozen more well-dressed young men and woman sat stiff and dead along the walls of the room. He must have missed them in the morning’s dusky light. He immediately ran to the hotel’s front desk to inform security of the tragic situation up in their Presidential suite. Security checked immediately and found nothing but the man with the corporate card quietly eating his breakfast. My barber’s nephew headed straight to his car and drove directly out of Atlantic City. He has yet to return to the town that he once loved.
