Everything Changes

gambling?”
    “It’s about us, Zack. You and me on the open road. Hanging out, talking, listening to music, eating shitty rest-stop food, and staring at hot women we’ll never sleep with.”
    “Did you ask Jed?”
    “He’s got a date.”
    “So you let him off the hook, and I get the hard sell.”
    “Jed’s too much of a high roller, anyway. You know you want to come.”
    I sighed. Rael could go on like this all day. “Okay,” I said.
    “Great,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
    “Raely.”
    “Zacky.”
    “What if I’d said yes to Vegas?”
    Rael laughed. “Are you kidding? Tamara never would have gone for it.”

    The average man, when contemplating a trip to Atlantic City, pictures two things: money, and hotel sex with a stranger. There’s absolutely no reason to believe he’ll score in either category. On the contrary, the smart money has him dropping five hundred to a thousand dollars at the twenty-five-dollar blackjack tables, getting drunk on watered-down drinks, and ogling the desiccated cocktail waitresses through smoke-stung eyes as they scurry about in comically tailored uniforms that showcase raised, tired cleavages, legs clad in skin-hued panty hose to hide their varicose veins. And even after he’s realistically adjusted his standards, he doesn’t dare hit on them, because the carefully vacant look in their eyes seems to be a front for something infinitely more volatile, something that could spill over, in an instant, to a dangerous, man-hating rage, and if there’s anything worse than rejection, it’s loud, violent rejection involving security personnel. So instead he simply overtips, nonchalantly pressing his ten-dollar chip into her hand with a polite smile, as if in contrition for the brief but sordid fantasy of hotel sex in which he was engaged just moments before, because, honestly, he’s not one of
those
guys. The average man will show up to work the next day throbbing, unsexed, and hungover, his throat scratchy from secondhand smoke, his wallet empty because he’s never completely internalized when to and when not to double down. But ask him a few months later, and he’ll be ready to go again, eyes glazing over at the prospect of the financial and sexual windfalls that await. I don’t begin to understand this phenomenon, but someone in the marketing department somewhere deserves one hell of a raise.
    The average man is an idiot to think that his night at Atlantic City will end with pornographic acts in a comped suite at the Borgata, but he’s nonetheless justified in the presumption that he won’t end the night suspended upside down in a demolished BMW, his chest crushed by the steering column, his vital organs pierced by his own splintered bones. I mean, what are the odds?
    It’s nice to think, in view of what happened, that Rael spent his last living hours living it up with his best friend. Nice, but not particularly true. I wish I could say otherwise. That we won big, or lost but laughed our way through it, or had some wildly memorable experiences along the way, that Rael was ebullient and talked about how happy he was to be married and have Sophie, that we bonded and reminisced and cracked inside jokes and bantered with sexy women and had a boisterous good time. That in his few remaining hours, he was bursting with the vim and vigor of life. But really, it was just your typical, average working stiff’s ill-advised weeknight trip to Atlantic City, utterly forgettable were it not for its tragic conclusion. We dropped a few hundred at the blackjack tables in the first hour we were there, then set off on what would prove to be a fruitless search for cheaper tables. Rael grumbled about not being able to take full advantage of the free table drinks because he was going to have to drive home at some point, and I annoyingly pointed out that he should have thought of that before we left. We sat among the damaged and the elderly at the slot machines, our vision fuzzy from smoke and exhaustion. Tamara called his cell frequently—Sophie was giving her a hard time—and he would excuse himself to find a spot where he could hear her above the din of the machines. When we’d lost all that we were willing to lose, we found an ATM and lost a bit more, and then we found a nightclub to sit in, sipping cocktails and staring at women who didn’t stare back. Both of us wanted to go home already, but neither wanted to be the one to suggest it, to put voice to the