Vegas hadn’t been very good to Chuck. Celine sucked, his hotel room faced a bank of windows, it was hotter than hell outside and cold as an iceberg inside, and worst of all, the convention still had a full day to go. But things begin to look up when a seemingly chance encounter with an old high school buddy turns Chuck’s fortunes around.
NOTE: This story appears in Rob Rosen's best-selling collection, Short Spurts.
Jackpot By Rob Rosen I sat down and slid in a twenty; it was, sadly, the last of a once-hefty wad. Vegas hadn’t been very good to me, you see: Celine sucked, my hotel room faced a bank of windows, it was hotter than hell outside and cold as an iceberg inside, and, worst of all, the convention still had a full day to go. In other words, neither I nor my wallet could take much more abuse. Still, I had hope. Eighty quarters, that twenty dollars I mentioned, was sixteen shots at a small fortune. Heck, three quarters could be parlayed into, into…well, f**k, not a whole lot. Not in the grand scheme of things, anyhow. So, I nursed my free rum and Coke, not to mention that old Andrew Jackson, and prayed for a miracle. Given that not many had happened in the past couple of millennia, I wasn’t h