My Cardboard Balcony

You Slept With Sean by Belinda Roddie He had an air mattress pumped for two, the crumbs of bagel bites still on the rug. He bellowed like train wheels in his sleep. You remembered to lock the door. When you woke up, he was already making eggs, and you wanted tabasco sauce with your meal, but all he had was ketchup, so you knew it was just a fling.

I knew every card dealer in the casino personally, so I was put at a table with a machine and had to deal with the clicks and whirs of the aces and spades and hearts and jacks being shuffled and spewed at me. At this point, it was me against the mechanical dealer. No one else bid on my money - the owner wanted me to lose. He wanted me, for once in my life, not to walk away with double or triple the amount I had walked in with. I walked out with quadruple the amount that night.