Madeleine's bad mood was only getting worse, the more she walked around aimlessly under the still-scorching sun of the Nevada evening. She had absolutely no idea where she was; she'd headed off the Las Vegas Strip at least an hour ago, and now she was taking aimless turns through wide, deserted streets lined with nothing but large, plain-looking houses and identical low-rise offices or apartment blocks. She might have said she was lost, but it wasn't like Madeleine was going anywhere in particular in the first place. She'd just been wandering around ever since being ditched by her friends.
'Friends' really wasn't the right term, she reflected. It had probably been too optimistic for Madeleine to hope that those cool, older girls would ever want to be friends with a nerd like her. When she'd gone to college, she'd sworn she would try and turn over a new leaf - to be more sociable, more popular. As a result, she'd done her best to hang out with a group of popular seniors in one of her classes, even though she'd never been able to shake the feeling that they were laughing at her behind her back. When they'd invited her to come along on their Spring Break trip to Las Vegas, she'd been overjoyed, even whilst knowing that it was probably too good to be true. She'd agreed to drive when they'd asked, too, which was probably the only reason they'd bothered to invite her.
Who knew that you had to be twenty-one to gamble at a casino?
Her so-called friends, obviously. Their gleeful, mocking giggles when they'd 'apologetically' told Madeleine that she couldn't come in with them had made that very clear. It didn't even make sense! If you were nineteen, like her, you were an adult. Old enough to join the army, old enough to own a gun, but apparently not old enough to pull the lever on a slot machine. It made Madeleine want to scream.
Not that she cared about gambling, really. Madeleine just wanted to feel like she actually do it. Like she could be cool. Like she could fit in, for all that she stuck out like a sore thumb around Alison, Kay, Stef, and all the others. They all looked like glamor models. Not her. Madeleine was, in a word, average. She had mousy, brown hair, kept too short to be a hassle and too long to be stylish. Her face was round and plain, and her figure was chubbier than she would have liked. She didn't even dress like them. She couldn't. She couldn't stand the thought of going out in public in the kinds of revealing outfits they wore. Even now, in the heat, she was wearing a maxi dress with long sleeves.
Madeleine simply didn't fit in.
But she needed to find something to do. She had to make some kind of use out of this trip; something to make sure her fake friends weren't snickering behind their hands the whole car trip home. Maybe she'd find someone to hook up with. Why not? She could do it. Maybe she'd get drunk in a seedy bar. Maybe she'd hang out in a strip club. Best of all would be if she could find a casino that didn't check ID, so she could get the real Vegas-
A casino.
Suddenly, it was right there. Except, that didn't make any sense. A casino was a building. It couldn't 'suddenly' be anywhere. Yet, somehow, it had crept up on her, and now she was standing right outside of it. Like many casinos, it was styled to look old and grand - in this case, almost like a cathedral, although any illusions regarding its purpose were shattered by the bright, red, neon sign over the entrance. Peccatoris Ludum Casino, it read. The monolithic structure looked totally out of place in the surrounding neighborhood. Madeleine figured it was probably a cheap, seedy kind of establishment, looking to snag some tourists who wandered away from the bright lights of the Strip.
Tourists just like her, in other words.
In truth, the whole place gave Madeleine a bad feeling, but she was determined to be adventurous, for once in her life. Madeleine walked up to the front door and stepped inside.
It was empty.
The palatial casino floor Madeleine found herself on was all the more grandiose for how deserted it was. It stretched away into the distance, full of tables for all kinds of games, but Madeleine couldn't see a single patron besides herself. Still, the casino's theming was so earnest it brought a smile to her face. Instead of a medieval castle or a Roman palace, the Peccatoris Ludum Casino was hell. Mounted on all the walls were huge boards sculpted to resemble hellfire and painted with garish yellows and reds, and the columns holding up the ceiling had been carved to look like huge pillars of black, basalt rock. Besides that, it was all pristine, white stone and blood-red banners and curtains. The whole place looked like it was out of some kind of nineteen-twenties old-timey anti-gambling cartoon, complete with smooth, old-fashioned jazz playing over hidden speakers.
Madeleine giggled to herself. It was cute.
Unfortunately, though, an empty casino wasn't a very good place to have fun. Madeleine turned to leave, when a smoky, feminine voice calling out to her made her jump.
"You're not going to play? Such a shame."
Madeleine wheeled back around. She'd been wrong. The casino wasn't deserted, at least not completely. Standing behind a nearby blackjack table was one, single, solitary dealer.
The dealer was gorgeous. Her outfit was classy - the classic white shirt, black vest and black bow tie of a casino dealer - but it did little to hide her unbelievable, bombshell body. She had mouth-watering curves and a towering stature to match; Madeleine was surprised a woman like her was working as a dealer rather than a supermodel. She had the face for it too; high, angular cheekbones and full lips that seemed to promise the world, all framed by long, lustrous, black hair. Madeleine was straight, but even she couldn't help but stare.
"Oh, um, you're open?" Madeleine said uncertainly.
"Of course." The dealer just smiled. "We're always open for business."
Madeleine smiled too, as she noticed the one piece of flair to the dealer's outfit. To fit in with the theming of the rest of the casino, she was wearing a headband with two horns mounted on it, as if she was a demon. At least, Madeleine assumed there was a headband; she couldn't really see. It must have been nestled in under her hair. The look was very convincing. They didn't look like plastic at all. Madeleine could have taken them for real horns, if that hadn't been impossible.
"Would you care for a game?" the dealer asked, gesturing to her table.
Madeleine almost refused, but then she remembered how she'd wound up there. What else was she going to do? She nodded. "Sure! As long as you're OK with just me."
"It's no problem," the dealer told her, still flashing that winning smile. "Blackjack?"
Madeleine nodded again. It was one of the few games she actually knew how to play properly. She stepped up to the table and watched as the dealer produced a deck of cards and started shuffling it theatrically.
"I'm Madeleine. I'm here from out of town." Madeleine wasn't sure how normal it was to make small talk, but when there was only the two of them, it felt right. "What's your name?"
She'd searched for a name tag, but the dealer wasn't wearing one.
"Me?" the dealer seemed amused by the question. "I'm just a Dealer."
The way she said it made it more like a name than a job, and so Madeleine found herself thinking of the strange woman that way.
"Oh, um, do I need to get some chips?" Madeleine looked around for a place to cash in. "I didn't see..."
"No need," Dealer replied, still shuffling the deck. "You don't need chips to bet here."
"Really?" Madeleine reached for her handbag and checked her wallet. "Um... I don't really have a lot of cash, either."
Dealer laughed, as if Madeleine had just told a joke. "You don't need cash either. You can bet with anything."
Madeleine stared at her, baffled, as Dealer finished her preparations with a flashy riffle shuffle. "I'm not sure I understand."
"You can bet with anything," Dealer repeated. "Your body, your mind, your life - whatever you please."
"Uh...." Madeleine didn't like the sound of that one bit. "That sounds, like, really sketchy."
Dealer laughed good-naturedly. "Let me show you an example. One round - you'll get your bet if you win, and if you lose, it'll be on the house."
The first taste was free, it seemed. Madeleine shrugged. What did she have to lose? "Sure, OK!"
"Wonderful," Dealer purred. "So please, tell me: what's one thing you wish you could improve about yourself?"
Madeleine was a little taken aback by the question, but an answer came readily to mind. "Confidence," she said. "I wish I was more confident."
Dealer's smile widened. "That will do nicely. Let's play!"
She dealt the cards; two for Madeleine, and two for herself. Madeleine looked down. She had been dealt an eight and a six.
"Hit," she said.
Dealer obligingly gave her another card. Another six. That made twenty.
"Stay," Madeleine said, grinning. This was fun.
