Earlier this week, a drunk man stumbled into my office and set huge stacks of hundred-dollar bills on the counter. He also took out a coffee tin and emptied a collection of high-denomination chips, totaling well over $100,000, from various casinos. Judging from the way he swaggered and slurred his speech, it was apparent that he'd had more than enough to drink.
"My sunglasses!" he shouted while frisking himself. Unable to locate them, he rushed out the door, leaving his massive treasure sitting on my counter. Two minutes passed, then five. The stacks of money and chips remained in front of me like a still-life portrait of things I would never have.
Who leaves behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Las Vegas casino? Who can afford to? Figuring he'd come back eventually, I did nothing.
New customers entered the office and began eyeing the money while I went about my duties. Finally, I pushed the button under the counter so that security could take over the situation before anyone tried anything. The security guards waited 10 additional minutes for him, but he never showed. I signed a statement explaining everything that had happened, then the two guards carted his treasure off to lost and found. More often than not, people never go looking for the mass sums of money they've left sitting inside the casino. One has to wonder where all those millions in unclaimed funds go.
Later, I bought a Sunday paper to help me get through the rest of the monotonous shift. I was happy to find a couple of coupons for soup, and was even more excited to discover that one of the local pharmacies was selling 1-gallon jugs of water for 89 cents instead of 99 cents. I clipped the coupons and stuffed them inside my pocket. When my shift ended, I stopped at the pharmacy on the way home.
While I was walking around, a milk delivery man kept bringing in carts of milk and unloading them near the freezers. I noticed that he was heavily-tattooed, and asked if I could see his work. Unabashedly, he lifted his sleeve and showed me the depiction of modernized coy fish and Japanese dragons. I crouched down and checked out the Star Wars scenes wrapped around both legs.
"It's a good job," he bragged, "they don't care if I tattoo my whole body. They think I'm joking when I tell them I intend to ink my whole neck."
We talked about tattoos and our strange jobs for a while, and I learned a thing or two about how milk is shipped throughout the country. He said he felt lucky to have a job that enabled him to see all of America. To him, each new town was like a different world. He said he was in love with a different girl in each state, and that he rarely had to spend a night in a motel.
When I told him the story of the man who'd left $100,000 sitting on the counter, he did not believe me. I also told him about the pregnant woman who had run naked in the hallways during the Fourth of July weekend. Again, he laughed incredulously.
"I'm sure you see some crazy things working in a casino, but that stuff is straight-up make-believe," he said.
The hardest part about living in Las Vegas is trying to make non-Las Vegans believe these things.
We parted ways, and I went home with my new water jugs. I had been excited all night over the prospect of getting them for 89 instead of 99 cents. I put two in the fridge and set two on the counter, then I went upstairs and lit a candle. The flame cast an orange glow over my girlfriend sleeping soundly in bed. I stood there for some time, secretly admiring her beauty. Having someone like her to come home to made this town seem not so crazy.
In the bathroom, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I smiled, thinking about the rich man in the reflection and the two rich men I'd come into contact with earlier that night.