She looks down from her window as darkness falls by the river. This moonless night. Maybe she should play black, though roulette has never been a lover of hers. She stops by the chapel as she always does, her prayers non-specific yet as sincere as the fresh bouquet on the altar lit by the faux stained glass window. Once again she asks herself why casinos have chapels—she has never been joined there by anyone else, not even the people who knew they were on the wrong ticket to nowhere.

She sits at a table for two-dollar 21. She wins some, loses some. She has to pay for her own drinks at this table—White Russians to go down slow. The man next to her flashes two hundreds under the table; there are several reasons she just looks away. Upstairs. her neighbors in the next room were having quite the row, their voices pounding her headboard. She could see the decibels shaking like a speaker turned up too loud. She was scared for them, embarrassed for them, and she left. Two hundred dollars wants lingerie and lined stockings. She was commando in ballet slippers. And although somewhat excited by the prospect, it wasn’t for her. It wasn’t her. She sees the man later at the bar, alone and sad.

Years ago she went to the emergency room, the kind of thing where you wait for four hours, not an emergency. She watched a family gently share the waiting room furniture. Stoic. Quiet. The father didn’t even take off his thick jacket. Mother in her housecoat. Aunts and uncles holding hands, praying for the young man already behind doors they couldn’t see. No chapel. She was around the corner when she heard them. Wailing. Keening. Mother screaming as she dropped to her knees. Just like the sound of her neighbors in the room next door. Sometimes there’s no difference between anger and grief.

She tips the dealer. She always tips the dealer. It’s a gorgeous dark winter outside. A sharp wind plays over everything and everyone. Sirens in the background jolt the solitude around her; the doors to the casino freeze the sounds within. Slots, laughter, even the sound of ice cubes are unheard as she breathes the clear cold air. Fluorescent lights flood the marquis like a migraine but she doesn’t look. Her upstairs neighbors are still fighting but she doesn’t hear. The early morning river is shawled in mist, wraps around her like the stockings she neglected. It’s everything she asked for in the chapel.