On The Job
14 November 2009
One Comment
Short story derived from the photo below.
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“We’ll page you when we get another table going,” said the kid working the poker room desk, without even glancing up. This meant it was going to be an even longer night for Charlie. He hated waiting for a table; it could be 10 minutes or 2 hours. He couldn’t risk lingering since the goal was to go unnoticed and it was hard to be inconspicuous sitting by himself in a poker room. He also didn’t want to waste any money at the table games. Wandering around the casino to stall for time and dropping a little money into some slots was pretty much his only option.
Once he was situated in front of a mindless penny slot machine, he pulled out a ten and took his time. He ordered vodka and seven and let his thoughts wander in between pulls trying to avoid blowing through the money too quick. Right now, blending in was all he wanted. It was easy money for Charlie once he got to the tables. He made a steady living by taking a small pile of money from a different casino every week. Not too much, enough to pay his bills and keep him out of a nine to five job that would suck the little bit of life he had left away. As long as he didn’t visit the same place too often, no one seemed to notice. Which is why he had to spread it across as many different locations as he could. If it wasn’t for that, Charlie would never come to this particular casino again.
Binion’s Horseshoe. This was the casino that Sope always insisted on. She loved the lights of downtown Las Vegas. They visited a couple times a year and she would never agree to stay on the strip. Back then they knew everyone who worked at the Horseshoe. She loved to play poker too and he was impressed that she was clearly good at it. Those were the days when the poker room had a real host, not some snot nosed kid who had no respect for the game. Charlie couldn’t visit this place as often in his rotation, because he spent too much time distracted and thinking about her. Like he was now.
“You want another one of those, handsome?” asked a sweet young waitress with legs so long it took some time for his eyes to travel all the way up. “Sure” he answered. She paused for a second and seemed disappointed that he didn’t chat with her, but she turned and headed toward the bar. Handsome. He hadn’t heard that in awhile. Leaning over, he caught his reflection in the shiny side of the next slot machine. He still wore his hair slicked back the same way, but there was more gray hair than black these days. His eyes looked tired and he was thought his once thin, sharp nose was beginning to have a bit of a gin blossom look to it. He reached up and grabbed at his nose in an attempt to rub it back to normal. That was when he caught a glimpse of the carpet.
It was still the old carpet. Sope loved this carpet, he thought. It was dirty brown carpet and most of it had been ripped out and replaced over the last few years as the new owners had been renovating. It looked almost as though they were tiles of carpet. Each box was about the size of her shoe and it was clearly defined with a dark brown border and little white dots. The cursive “B” was smack dab in the middle surrounded by a rotation of silhouettes; one of a cowboy’s profile and the other a boot. This took him back to a time when she was still his. He pictured her standing with her white vacation dress and heels. She had just noticed this carpet even though they had stayed at least three times before. “Oh, honey! Now this is what I mean. Look at these details. How could we ever stay anywhere else? I just love this place! Don’tcha love it?”
The pain of remembering was instant and unbearable. I should get up, leave and never come back here, he thought. It had been almost 13 years since he touched her skin or heard her voice. He thought back even further than that to the day they met at a cookout some mutual friends were having. He only chatted with her for a moment before she had to take off with her ride who was leaving. Charlie was 30 years old at the time and he had never been bold about asking women out, but he couldn’t let her slip away that fast. As she was heading out he chased after her with a scrap of paper and a pen. Without even considering how silly he looked, he asked her to write her name and number down for him. She smiled a shy embarrassed smile and scribbled something down for him as she slid out the door.
After she was gone he realized he didn’t even know her name, so he glanced down at the paper and was immediately confused. He couldn’t even begin to read the name she scratched down for him. After days of torturing himself over who to ask for when he called, finally he decided that the closest guess he could come up with was Sope. Logically it made no sense that her name was Sope, but nothing else seemed to fit with what she had written. “May I speak to . . . Sope” he cringed when he heard how silly it sounded to say out loud. There was silence for what seemed like eternity, but after a few moments she burst out with laughter.
“ Do you mean Sophie?” she asked in-between fits of laughter. “Is this Charlie? I can’t believe you don’t know my name!” After he teased her about her horrible handwriting, she agreed to let him take her out if he promised to remember her name, but he always called her Sope after that. Every single time. She was Sophie for everyone, but she was Sope to Charlie.
They had married very soon after that and spent 12 years together. When things were good, they were amazing. And when things were bad, that sweet lady turned into a demon. There were many more good days than bad though and he missed her so much. He often wondered if he could handle things better if he knew where she went or what happened to her.
They were only days away from a big trip to Vegas when she disappeared. He came home from work and she was gone. The first thing he noticed was that the front door was unlocked. Sope never left the door unlocked unless she was grabbing the paper or something quick. She was usually home before him and had dinner started by the time he got home, but there was nothing that day. Only a dark, quiet, empty home. He waited a little while then he began calling everyone he could think of. Eventually he called the police who made him wait 24 hours and call back. All night long he drove around the town searching for her. Her purse was gone, but everything else was home including her car. Her toothbrush was still in the bathroom cup with his right next to her jewelry box, which still had everything in it.
When the police finally did come they treated Charlie like a serial killer. They made him strip down to show them that he didn’t have bruises and they took samples from under his nails. They took his dirty clothes basket and some shoes. By the time they left, he actually began to feel like he had done something wrong. He was scared to call them and follow up, convinced they were going to arrest him on the spot. None of this distracted him from the fact that his Sope was gone and as time crawled on he began to realize she wasn’t coming back. After a few weeks, he got the courage to call the police and ask if they had any leads, but he got nothing from them. At first he thought it was because he was a suspect, but over time he realized they didn’t care. He started a website for her and spent every waking hour for 3 years trying to find out where she was. But there was nothing. No one saw anything. No one knew anything. Neither of them had much family, so there wasn’t a support system for the cause. He hired a private detective who tried to convince Charlie she had simply left him, but he didn’t believe she would leave without her car or a single item from the house. It was ridiculous.
Charlie woke up one day and decided he was done. He drove to the bank and told his boss he quit then turned around and withdrew their entire savings. Everything he couldn’t fit into a small U-haul was given away or sold within a week. Even most of Sope’s things, which was easier than he thought. There really wasn’t much of a plan, but he headed to Vegas and rented a one-bedroom house with a small backyard and quiet neighbors. He hadn’t planned on earning his living through poker, in fact he thought he would lose everything at the poker tables, but he had more of a discipline for it than he had ever realized and before long he was making as much in an 6 hour session as he made in a week back home.
Now ten years had passed and he was here in the one casino he tried to avoid the most. Chugging down the last of his drink, he pushed the cash out button. It was time to check on the table. If there wasn’t a table now, he was going to leave. He didn’t need much money to get by and this wasn’t worth the heartache.
As he rounded the corner and passed some tourists throwing their money at a blackjack dealer, he took in a scent that brought him back. It was Cinnabar. He knew the name because it was the only perfume Sope ever wore. She bought a new bottle every year in January even if she hadn’t used the old one up. She said it didn’t smell as good when it got old and he thought that was the silliest thing he had every heard. Boy this place is getting to me tonight, he thought.
“I just think these table games are silly, let’s go play in the poker room.” The voice made him stop in his tracks. He had done this before many times. Stopped because he thought that someone sounded exactly like his Sope. It was always in his head or a close coincidence. “I wanna distract some poor innocent guy and take his money.” Her voice was strikingly similar to his Sope. He slowly turned and looked back around the corner. The hair was different and the clothes were a little flashier that Sope would wear, but the profile was his Sope. Charlie immediately lost the feeling in his right leg and almost fell down. He involuntarily lunged forward and a passing couple caught him. The small crowd around him let out a hushed murmur as he tried to regain his balance. No doubt they thought he was some bumbling drunk idiot. All the noise attracted the attention of Sope’s twin and the lady she was talking with. When his eyes met hers there was instant recognition. His wife was alive and in Vegas playing poker and joking around with a friend instead of wasting away in a shallow grave in the middle of a deserted corn field or at the bottom of a deep ravine. How could this be?
Within seconds, she has composed herself and looked away. She whispered something about leaving to her friend and got up by herself and headed toward the elevators at double the speed of anyone around her. Charlie instantly followed her. As she reached the elevator she attacked the button pushing it seven or eight times in a row as if that could speed it up. “Sope? Is that really you?” she slouched her shoulders forward as a small child does when bed time is announced. “Look at me, Sope. What are you doing here?” She did look up and for a moment she looked like she was going to feign confusion. She was going to try to deny it. But the battle with her own mind was short and she gave up quickly. She did not respond though, she only stared at Charlie while she looked for the words to say.
“I looked for you, Charlie. But you were gone. I came home five years ago, but someone else lives there now. No one knew who you were. I was starting to think I had made our life up until I finally tracked down Carla and Ben. They told me you took off years ago. I can’t believe you’re here. Now. Now that I finally started to move on.” She told him this as though she had lost track of him in a mall one afternoon and not that she had returned home after an 8-year absence. He was growing angry.
“What? You came home after 8 years? What are you talking about? You left me? That’s what happened? You just left?”
Tears began to flow and she began to tremble all over. This woman who had seemed so confident 10 minutes earlier threatening to rid the tourist of their entertainment budget was now crumbling in front of him. He was sure he should be angry, but he helped her over to a small table with two chairs that accompanied a small coffee stand in the lobby. “I didn’t leave, Charlie, I was taken.” She got up and grabbed a handful of napkins from the coffee cart to wipe the stream of tears from her face and blow her nose. She continued to talk for an hour straight. She told him that she had gotten home that night 13 years ago and unlocked the front door to their home. As she stepped inside someone had grabbed her from behind and dragged her kicking a screaming to a van. From that moment she was sure she was going to die and every day for 2 years while she was locked in his basement she thought it was going to be her last day to live. She explained that over time he began to let her come up into the house and for another 2 years she lived mostly in the basement, but was allowed to come up into the home for small stretches of time. Charlie listened to her story, but couldn’t understand why she had not called the police or attempted to escape in all that time.
She tried to explain to him that she was constantly afraid he was going to kill her as he often told her he would. She did not give him details, but he gathered from the way she told the story that she was beaten and probably raped repeatedly, but he pushed these thoughts from his mind. Sope was alive all this time and he had quit looking for her
Sophie told him that by the time she lived in the house for 6 years she had accepted that this was her life. The house she was kept in seemed far from everything and she didn’t know what town she was in or where she was. Then one night as her captor slept next to her in the bed she killed him. Sophie gave no details and Charlie was too shocked to ask. She called 911 and said nothing. A word did not come out of her mouth again for 6 months. At first she had been placed in a psych ward of the jail, because she had murdered this man. When she finally did speak it was to her therapist and over 3 more months the story unfolded. It took the police some time to verify the story and it was harder considering they couldn’t find Charlie. By the time she got back to Arlington, eight years had passed and Charlie was long gone.
This was more than Charlie could handle. Before she finished her story, he told her he had to go. He would need time to absorb this and he would come back up and talk to her some more. He reached in his pocket and handed her a scrap of paper and his pen to write down her cell phone number. When she handed it back to him, he was stunned to look down and see the same scribbled note she had given him 25 years before.
-Clair Devers (11/09)
Good build-up but I think the reason for sope’s absence sounds like a cold case episode. Like the first two thirds alot though.
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