I nearly lose my balance when I take the money back from him.

Holding it tight to my chest, I start walking down the strip, my mind blotted out. I can’t even think. I’m not even worried. No, something visceral has overtaken my rational brain.

Worry? Worry would be the rational thing. I’ve always worried about everything - everything irrational made me sick with regret, that I’d made the wrong choice, taken the wrong path.

But I’m not worried now. Worry would be the rational thing.

Worry.

The word sounds crude now as I focus on the sound of my feet on the concrete and the pounding of my heart in my chest.

I have no option to worry right now. There’s only survival. Worry is passive. I don’t have time for that.

I can still feel the nameless man’s eyes burning two holes into the back of my head. I imagine his eyes sweeping across my face. I want to turn around and face the man who I’m prey for. But I just keep walking, because it’s all I can do.

I have to keep moving forward. Thinking about what got me here will do nothing to save me.

Closing my eyes, I move off to the side of the strip, shouldering past a middle-aged couple with Mickey and Minnie hats, and collapse onto the steaming hot marble ledge of a small fountain in the clearing outside one of the casinos. The woman glances down at me and I give her a small, forced smile to let her know I’m okay. I don’t need any well-intentioned people asking me what’s wrong.

I breathe deeply through my nose and hold the hot air inside my lungs. Maybe if I keep it there long enough, I’ll explode. My hand dips into the fountain and I let my fingertips trail the top of the water. But it doesn’t feel wet. The water is thick and warm like the air above it. And it feels metallic - I can sense it in my teeth. I open my eyes and the bottom of the fountain is filled with pennies. Even though the inside of the fountain walls are dotted with fresh blue glass tiles, I can see the water itself is brown. It only has the illusion of being clean and pure.

I don’t pull my hand away immediately. I let it languish there for a moment, and I finally exhale. Checking over my shoulder from where I came, I see that he’s still standing where we met. I haven’t gotten very far away from him. It must have only been a few meters. Maybe less. Ten feet, maybe.

He leans against the wall and takes out a pack of Marlboro Reds. My ex used to smoke those. His truck smelled like them. The nameless man nips one of the smokes between his teeth and pulls the pack away, bringing a chrome lighter to the end of the cigarette. He glances over at me as he takes his first pull, and hooks his thumb and forefinger on the white paper near his lips, pulling it away and exhaling up over the crowd of people walking by.

I see him watching me. Sickness churns inside my stomach as I shut my eyes and pull the bag closer. I consider dunking my head into the filthy water with a thin layer of green shit floating on top and screaming until my lungs explode. Until I explode. Shattered into a million pieces.

But I don’t scream. I keep my mouth shut and open my eyes and look back over my shoulder. He nods softly, gently, looking at me under dark eyebrows and a cocked-down chin and takes another drag of his cigarette

I realize my feet are curled up under me. The sun is starting to set, and I hear the high-pitched jangle of slot machines, cherries and bars chiming and signaling that people have won. Uncurling my legs, I put both of my feet on the ground and I stand up.

There’s something I can do. This is not a hopeless situation.

I march over to an escalator behind me, leading to the main floor of one of the casinos. I’ve been here before. It was for my twenty-first birthday. I didn’t know what I was doing, but my boyfriend made me come. He said it would be fun. He said it would be a rite of passage.

As I get off the escalator, I look behind me. I have a clear view of the people coming up after me, and the man isn’t there. I quickly go over to the edge the balcony where I’ve been let off, and check down below for him.

I’ve lost him. That’s a good thing.

Going through the doors to the casino, the cold, stale air is suffocating. It’s just as bad as the hot air outside. At least the air outside is dry and doesn’t smell like anything other than the desert sun. Inside, the air smells of a suffocating mix of cologne, beer, gin and lime.

A security guard flashes his glance over my face and then down to my body, smiling when his eyes come across my breasts. He doesn’t stop to ask me for any ID, even though I’m only twenty-two and probably look three or four years younger.

I keep walking past him and stop when I get to the main lobby area.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. All I have is a bag of cash representing everything I own and a few idea to come up with the extra twenty percent, but all of my ideas are desperate and I wouldn’t know how to pull them off anyway.

Screw it. That’s not true at all. I can pretend to be naive and lie to myself, but I know exactly how to pull off at least one of my ideas.

I scan the floor of the casino. Straight ahead is a large expanse of slot machine, dinging and flashing. Even though there are no actual coins anywhere, the jangling of change against metal is filling my ears.

On the outsides of the floor, along the walls, are restrooms, entrances to a variety of restaurants, and then inside the perimeter are the table games.

I start walking to the left of the casino floor, moving carefully. A cocktail waitress slips past me with a tray of drinks, and I follow her. I figure she knows what she’s doing. Maybe some of that will rub off on me.

Card games aren’t a science, but I’m not familiar enough with the rules to any of them. I can’t do anything that would involve skill. I need luck to be my guide.

The waitress stops at a table where only one man is sitting. I keep my distance and watch them from afar, ducking behind a slot machine and settling into its low swiveling chair. The man has a shaved head and is wearing a black suit. He’s big - I bite down on my bottom lip as he takes a bill out of his wallet and tries to slip it into the garter holding up one of the waitress’ thigh-high stockings. She grabs the bill from his hand before he can touch her and plasters a pretty but fake smile on her face. He turns to watch her walk away as she slips past me again, scowling. I look at her tray and see the bill he thinks entitled him to grope her was a hundred dollar bill.

As he watches her walk away and she slips around a corner, past a row of slot machines, his gaze lands on me. I falter and fall back in my seat slightly, as though his look has touched me physically. He calls me over with the wave of one of his hands and pats the empty seat next to him.

My heart speeds up, and all I can feel is its beating inside my chest. My chest feels hollow - my whole body feels hollow - and I can’t even feel my feet on the ground as I walk over to him. My legs feel like jelly as I smile and sit down next to him in the high rotating chair.

He turns my chair to him and puts a foot on the bar at the bottom, holding me in place. I sit back in my seat to get as far away from him as possible, even though there’s nowhere I can go. His knee shifts between mine and parts my thighs.

“Do you play?”

His voice is sexier than I thought it would be. I expected him to have a foreign accent; I don’t know why. The dealer starts laying cards down in front of the man and in front of himself. I’m somewhat familiar with the game, though not enough to be able to win, but I pretend not to be familiar with it at all. Better to just let him be in control.

I shake my head and glance over at the dealer. The man takes his feet off my chair and lets it shift back into place, so I’m squarely facing the table.

“Just watch for now,” he says, glancing at his cards and back at me. “This is blackjack. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.”

“Looks interesting.”

I hope the music and the sounds are drowning out the sound of my heart. It’s all I can hear. I say a silent prayer that no one else can hear.

With his left hand, the man taps the green felt tabletop next to his stack of chips on the betting circle and his right hand comes down onto my thigh. It was better when his knee was between my legs. His hand looks clammy, but I can barely feel it against my leg. My body goes numb.

Self-preservation. In slow-motion the dealer places another card in front of us as the man’s jaw clenches. I sense his teeth coming down behind his cheek, the top and bottom rows grinding together.

“Twenty-one,” the dealer says, placing both of his palms face-up on the table.

The man pumps a fist into the air and freezes it there, taking his hand off my leg and grabbing his drink. He pours the dark amber liquid into his mouth as the dealer gives him his chips.

“I think it’s time to celebrate.” The man snakes his arm around my back until his hand comes around the other side, to my stomach. His fingers grasp at the waistband of my tight black leather pants and I squirm out of my seat.

I rationalize all of this to myself. At least he’s in a good mood.

The dealer looks away and he congratulates the man with a small, distant voice. He gathers the man’s chips without another word and divides them into similar denominations, exchanging them for chips of larger value.

The man slips a finger into the waistband of my pants again and pulls me to him while stacking his chips with the other hand. My hands land on his chest. He’s breathing calmly and easily. It’s simple enough for him to be here. It’s easy for him to do this. He’s done it before. I can see it in the noxious mix of nonchalant indifference and animal lust.

“Do you have a room here?” he asks. He must think I work here. He must think I’m a professional. It’s that assumption that might save me. If he thinks I work here, he won’t try anything too bad with me.

I need to make him think I know what the hell I’m doing.

“For five thousand, I might,” I breathe. I try to smile. I can’t tell if I’m succeeding. My brain signals the muscles in my lips to turn up into a coy smirk, the flirty smile of a woman who’s pretending she isn’t going to ask for money from a stranger for sex, but who knows the man she’s with knows what the deal is.

The man grabs his crotch as he licks his lips.

“You must be new. You never name your price first. But for you...I’ll give you the five thousand. That’s including the one thousand you’re giving me for the orgasm you’re going to have on my tongue.”

“Just give me a minute,” I say as disgust fills my chest, ”and then let’s meet back here.” He loosens his grip just enough to let me slip away. His hand catches my wrist as I turn away from him and I snap my head quickly to look at him. He winks as he lets me go.

He thinks I’m a pro, and I need to show that I know the lay of the land. I trace the steps I saw the cocktail waitress make, and snake around the edge of a row of slot machines. I pass a few young men sitting at a row of machine, looking bored and tired. I spot the door marked Employees Only and rush over to it.

I spin around and let my back hit the wall, and I slide down and let my ass hit the floor. I want to cry. I need to let go. But nothing will come. If I could just cry it out and let myself feel…

But I haven’t been able to cry. Not for the past month.

I take my compact out of my purse and check my reflection. Is that really me? It couldn’t be me. My face is slack and pale, but I mentally, I feel nothing. Physically, I want to hurl. I don’t even know where the bathroom is.

Snapping my compact shut, I slip it back into my purse and put the bag of cash down on the floor next to me. I look straight ahead at the people walking by. I can tell by how their feet hit the ground that they’re here because they want to be, not because of forces outside their control.

Putting my hand on the bag next to me, I close my eyes lightly. The lights flash behind my eyelids. They’re a harbinger of hope. I can do this. They speed up and I find myself in real time again for the first time in a month.

This is almost all over. I just have to get this over with.

I stand up and breath. This is for the money I need. Better people have done worse than this.