The Matrons of Regal Bay
Chapter 35
Rebecca's Tales -- Part 2
The casino was busier than Rebecca would have thought for a Tuesday morning. She was taking a few days off, one of those use-them or lose-them deals at the hospital. So, she was using them. It was odd for her to take much time off, let alone an entire week, unless she and her husband were going away. Ron didn't have any vacation time to use, however, leaving Rebecca to idle away the hours of the day. For whatever reason, she found herself coming out to the casino instead of heading for the mall, as she had originally intended that morning.
The parking lot had been rather empty and she was able to find a spot very near the main entrance. The June sun was already warm on her face as she walked towards the casino entrance. A tour bus was off-loading several older people, many with walkers and canes. A group of assisted-living home residents on a day-trip, no doubt. Inside, she was greeted at the door kiosk by both a security guard, dressed in a menacingly black suit, and a young woman who asked if she'd like to join the Casino Club. Rebecca had been to the casino enough to have her club card handy, and flashed it towards the young woman as she passed.
"Have a lucky visit!" the female employee smiled. The male security guard was silent.
Rebecca took in the lights and sounds of the casino, which even at the early hour of nine-fifteen on a Tuesday morning were bright and loud. The clings and clicks of slot machines in play rolled across the floor. Rebecca headed up the main aisle and went around the centrally placed bar towards the area where she usually played. Above the section ran a long copper-colored sign emblazoned with the words "Penny Lane!" This was the area where the casino had set long rows and round benches full of penny denomination games. Although it was rare for a player here to win any kind of significant jackpot when playing anything other than maximum bet on one of the machines, it was still a very popular area. Rebecca and Ron usually came out to the casino once or twice a month, and then in the evenings when it would be rather difficult getting onto one of the popular machines. For a Tuesday morning, even with most of the casino's patrons in the area, Rebecca could get onto her favorite games easily.
Dressed comfortably, Rebecca wore jeans that hugged her hips a little tightly and a loose-fitting forest green sweater that her husband usually wore when doing his yard work in the autumn. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, bound up with a chestnut brown scrunchy at the point where her hair, now reaching well down her back, began to curl. She had forgone make-up that morning, although she had run a lip gloss across her lips before leaving her car. Nothing too fancy.
"Can I get you a drink, Ma'am?" Rebecca turned to see the smiling face of a young African-American man near her shoulder. "Coffee? Or maybe something stronger?"
"Nothing right now, thank you," she told the server. He nodded and moved on, and Rebecca found herself watching his butt as he walked away. The uniform slacks did little to hide the fact that he was an athlete, had to be with a tight ass like that, she grinned.
For the next hour, Rebecca played the slots. She seldom played more than half of the maximum bet on any one game, but did occasionally win a little here or there. Keeping a running total in her head, she figured that she had won more than she had lost by the time her cell phone chimed. She looked at the caller I.D., but fearing that it was too loud where she sat, she cashed out and headed up to the bar where it was a little quieter.
Sliding onto a barstool as she hit the appropriate buttons on her phone to call her daughter Audrey back, Rebecca was greeted by the bartender. "Can I get you something?" he asked with a smile. Rebecca read his name tag.
"Thank you, Luke. I'd like a beer please. Anything on tap."
"Olympia Light?" he asked.
"It's what we have at the house, so I guess that'll be alright." She turned her attention to the phone, listening to it ring. Audrey answered a moment later.
"Mom, I'm glad I caught you," was her daughter's warm greeting. "Are you still at home?"
"No, I'm out at the casino. Why?" Luke placed the mug of light golden beer in front of her and stepped away.
"Why are you at the casino?" her daughter asked. "You know how I feel about that place."
"And I'm not asking you to join me, am I?" Rebecca was aware of her oldest daughter's "Holier-than-thou" attitude. Yes, she did excellent work for the church and local charities, but Audrey still didn't need to prance around on her high-horse, not with her mother. After all, Rebecca and Audrey shared several sinful secrets.
Audrey paused, and then continued. "I'm sorry. I'm a little stressed, is all. I need to get my birth certificate and make a copy. The church needs it for the trip reservations."
Rebecca remembered that her daughter and son-in-law were going on a church-sponsored trip to Mexico City and Belize in the autumn. She would be watching their young son during that time. "Everything's in the safe," she said, referring to the fire-proof box that sat in the hallway closet. "The key's on the ring hanging in the kitchen, the one with the Space Needle doo-higgy on it."
"That's all fine and dandy, Mom," Audrey replied, "except for the fact that I don't have a key to your house anymore. I had to give it to Carl, remember?"
Rebecca did. Carl had moved out and was now living near the university in a house with two others. He was moving on with his life ahead of returning to school for his junior year as well as his engagement to his high-school sweetheart, Nina Masters. Not living at home for the first time, Carl was still wanting to be able to stop in from time to time, and Ron had Audrey give up her key to her brother. Not that it would have cost so much to have another made, but that was Ron. Three keys to his house were enough for him. Her husband was starting to get a little paranoid now that he was in his fifties. Either that, or working for the government at a secretive research facility was starting to get to him.
"Do you need it right now?" Rebecca asked after taking a drink of her cold beer.
"I need it before the end of the day," Audrey replied.
Rebecca sipped more of her beer, and noticed that the young bartender continued to look her way. She threw him a smile. "I'll be home in half an hour. But I have errands to run still. Your dad wants pork chops and potatoes for dinner and I haven't been to the store yet."
"Maybe you should be shopping instead of gambling," Audrey teased.
"I'm currently not gambling, young lady. I'll have you know that at this very instance I'm sipping a beer while a hot young bartender checks me out." She said this with just enough volume that Luke could hear her. He laughed and turned back to the sink, where he was rinsing a tray full of glasses a server had brought up. This gave Rebecca a good look at his butt, and involuntarily she licked her lips.
"God, I need to get laid," she whispered.
"I don't think God will be helping you out there, Mother!" Audrey gasped over the phone. Rebecca had forgotten about her daughter in the moment her mind flashed to her young bartender and his tight ass.
"You never know, now do you?" Rebecca replied. "He does work in mysterious ways, young lady."
"Okay, that's enough. I'll see you at home." Audrey hung up, and Rebecca dropped her phone back into her purse. She smiled at Luke, who was once again looking her way, and then drank down half of her remaining beer. She laid a five on the bar and Luke moved to give her change.
"No, keep it," Rebecca waved as she stood up.
"Hang on," Luke insisted, and a moment later he handed her a folded over cork coaster. "Here."
She looked at it and saw a phone number written on it in a hasty scribble. She looked back to him. "In case you still need to get laid later." He winked and then turned back to the sink. Rebecca could have sworn he even wiggled his ass, just for her. Stunned, she tucked the coaster into her purse and headed for the front doors. It had been a long time since she'd been hit on in public, and given a phone number to boot. This was something new, and very exciting. She could barely keep her mind on the road as she drove home.
Twenty minutes later, Rebecca parked alongside her daughter's blue Fusion in the driveway. She gave her gray SUV a glance and took a mental note to run it through the car wash later as she headed for the front door. Behind her, Audrey climbed from her own car.
"It's about time," her daughter said impatiently.
Rebecca looked back at her daughter and said, "I guess I could always leave and come back later." She even took a couple steps back down the walk towards her SUV.
"No! Mom, I'm sorry," Audrey apologized. "I'm just stressed about everything, is all."
"What is there to stress about? The trip's not for three months."
As they entered the house, Audrey answered, "It's Paul. He doesn't want to go now. He says it's work, but I think he just doesn't want to go. It was my idea to join the group, and I think he just doesn't like Pastor Berry anymore."
Rebecca had an idea why Paul didn't want to go on the trip. It had nothing to do with Pastor Berry either. Now Mrs. Berry, on the other hand, just might. She let her daughter drone on about her misery as she retrieved the safe key from the kitchen, and then as she opened it and removed the file folder marked, "Audrey". Handing it to her daughter, she said, "If you want me to keep those for you, be sure to bring them back. I'm not going hunting for them."
As they stepped out onto the front porch, Carl pulled up and parked his dirty white Silverado pick-up at the curb. "I'm never going to get my errands run," Rebecca moaned as she watched one child head for her car, and the other pull a duffle bag from the bed of his truck. "Let me guess: dirty laundry," she declared as Carl walked across the lawn.
"What gave it away?" he grinned.
"You've got laundry needing done, and I've got a yard in need of mowing and trimming," Rebecca said. "Now, which one are you going to do, and which am I going to do?"
Carl laughed. "I'm guessing you want me to mow your lawn, and maybe trim your bush?" Rebecca recognized the innuendo plainly.
"The only bushes needing trimming are right here," she said, gesturing towards the front of the house and the three low bushes that sat beneath windows. "Your father trimmed the rest, last night."
Carl grinned and leaned close to his mother. "But did he trim them the way I trim them?" He kissed her cheek quickly and then passed on into the house.
Rebecca turned and told her son, "I've still got errands to run. If you have the yard done when I get back, maybe I'll let you trim more than just the bushes."
"Ha!" Carl laughed. "Maybe I'll just do my own laundry and let you trim your own bushes!" Rebecca left her son to his antics and returned to her SUV, and the errands she continued to put off.
