30 minutes later

Playing bingo when drunk is not a pleasant experience. One has a hard time paying attention, the numbers on the cards seem rather foreign and there’s the constant feeling of having to vomit.

I’m not talking about me right now. I can drink a lot. But my Little Rib wasn’t doing too well. Three and a half vodka and orange juice and a total of ten unsuccessful bingo games had pretty much destroyed her biorhythm:

“Oh, I’m so sick!”

“Pull yourself together, Schnuckie. We have to win!”

“Ok, Roger. I mean Schatz, I am Roger. Ready! Am I.”

The bingo-voice announced the next round. The goal was to get the letter ‘X’, two diagonal rows of numbers on the card. That was too complicated for my Little Rib:

“What, they are drawing letters now?”

In moments like these I don’t say anything and simply stare at her without blinking. Words would just confuse her even more. And me, too.

“Ah, I get it. We are making a letter with numbers. Very interesting!”

Mrs. Baseball-Cap nodded: “My favorite round.”

“Oh, you speak German?”

Skeptically I scanned my cards after about twenty drawn numbers. I couldn’t even find a hint of an ‘X’ anywhere. I saw an ‘I’ and a ‘P’ which, should the numbers 54 and 70 come up, could have been upgraded to an ‘R’. Nevertheless the payout of 300 dollars would only be given to the lucky person with an ‘X’. My Little Rib complained that all she could come up with was a ‘Y’ and I had to explain to her that she only needed two more numbers to transform it into an ‘X’.

“Wooohooo! Gimme 50 and gimme 69. Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

“Not so loud, Schnuckie.”

“Sorry, Schatz.”

“Next number: Sixty … nnnnnnnnnine.”

Now she was on pins and needles. “Just one more number, Schatz. Oh my God, let us pray!”

“Bingo!” The drag queen again. And a second later: “Just kidding!” Very funny. We lowered our heads for an emergency prayer. Dear God, please let the next number be 50.

“Next number: Fffffffffffffifty.”

My Little Rib jumped up. “X! I got it!” By the way, she did it in German: icks. She threw her arms in the air and started shaking her hips. “I got an icks! I got an icks!” Then she pointed rudely at Mrs. Baseball-Cap. “And you ain’t got nothin’. You ain’t got nothin’!”

The voice coming from the speakers was unimpressed. “Next number: Twenty … threeeeeeeee.” It made scores of people shout “Bingo!” My Little Rip stood there, perplexed.

“Hey, bingo-bitch, what are you doing? I got an icks! Stop calling out numbers!”

“Might wanna yell ‘bingo’ next time, stupid tourist!” This suggestion spawned from an unknown location in the hall. It’s possible it actually came from the speakers. The woman who I got married to in a weak moment of naive optimism sat down and pouted. “This stinks! What are we going to do now?” I gently caressed her hand. “Now I’m going to sit at a different table and you will wait for your winnings.”

“You stay right here! What do you think, how much did we win?”

“Well, we have to share with a lot of people now.”

The bingo-courier darted by and dropped 76 cents on our table. “Congratulations!”

The last round started. This was the big one. It was the round everybody had been waiting for. The person who got the cover-all first (all numbers on one card) would get rewarded 1000 dollars.

“Wow, we sure could use that, right, Schatz?”

“Good luck.” Mrs. Baseball-Cap smiled patronizingly.

“Hi. How are you?”

To get the cover-all it is important to catch a good start. If you don’t have at least eight or nine out of the first ten numbers you might as well go home. My start was excellent. I was able to mark almost every number on my card. I looked over to my Little Rib. The alcohol had affected her eyes. With her dauber she marked all the spots that seemed significant to her … on the table. I gave up expecting anything productive from her that night.

The tension became almost unbearable as I was only five numbers away from 1000 dollars. For about two minutes I allowed myself to fantasize about buying a laptop, until Mrs. Baseball-Cap, in perfect English (but to Randy Jackson probably a little pitchy here and there), yodeled “Bingo!” right in my face. The world is unfair. And I hate the word ‘bingo’!

Soon the bingo-courier showed up and put a nice amount of dollar bills in a hand that was shaking in anticipation. Then she waited patiently for her tip.

“Forget it, she’s German,” my Little Rib remarked scornfully. I was in a bad mood as well. “I wanna go home!”

Mrs. Baseball-Cap completely ignored our negative vibes and asked: “May I ask you a favor? Would you mind escorting me to the parking garage? I hate to go all by myself with all this cash on me.”

Now, that I didn’t feel like doing at all. I already shook my head in reluctance but my Little Rib pulled me back by the ear and said: “Let’s go with her. Maybe she will give us a ride home. We would save the money for a cab.”

“We don’t have money for a cab.”

“Correct.”

We reached the parking garage and Mrs. Baseball-Cap was yapping without end. She told us stories from the eighties when all this (the garage) had still been desert and was crawling with snakes and scorpions. We were hoping to be offered a ride any moment now.

“Well, anyway, you two have a wonderful night. And thanks again for taking me to my car. That made me feel so much safer. Las Vegas isn’t what it used to be anymore. Too much crime. People kill for a few dollars. And the police are powerl-”

A swift and well-aimed strike by my Little Rib broke her neck. She panted as she dragged the lifeless body behind a fancy SUV. Waving with a wad of money she returned and staggered past me.

“C’mon, Schatz. Let’s go find a cab.”

This entry was posted by Michael Meyn on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Meyn's World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or a trackback from your own site.