Roulette, p.2
Roulette, page 2
KWBrown19: Wow, that's really nice.
19BrownsBacker19: Thanks. Anytime. My ex said that I am a sucker for betting against the House.
KWBrown19: What's the House?
19BrownsBacker19: Gambling. In a casino, the House has the rules set up in their favor. Betting against them is a bad idea since they're set up to win—unless you know something they don't.
KWBrown19: Gambling in general seems like a way to lose big.
19BrownsBacker19: When you know the odds, it’s not gambling. It's an opportunity.
KWBrown19: I prefer safe things. Sure things.
19BrownsBacker19: Then don't be a Browns fan.
KWBrown19: You have a point.
19BrownsBacker19: That wasn't just a point. Two-point conversion. Maybe field goal.
KWBrown19: I think the T. Rex could be a better kicker than last years.
19BrownsBacker19: Some of our kickers weren't so bad.
KWBrown19: If you don't expect them to score points. The last guy was only 75 percent accurate. I think he'll be worse this year.
19BrownsBacker19: Or he could be better. Don't be sad. This is a great day. We have all the potential in the world.
KWBrown19: And we're undefeated!
19BrownsBacker19: Too funny. What's tonight's drink in honor of our opportunities?
KWBrown19: Dunno. Maybe Great Lakes Brewing Company again.
19BrownsBacker19: That's your pre-game beer. Pick something funner. Take a shot.
KWBrown19: Only if you plan on holding my hair.
19BrownsBacker19: Too far away, though I'd rather be in Cleveland with you.
KWBrowns19: It'd be nice…
It had been 488 days since the last Cleveland Browns victory.
Wednesday before Labor Day
Cleveland and Los Angeles
The Diary of the Chaplain at MetroGen
Wednesday before Labor Day
There is phenomenal package to fly to Vegas with a ton of hotel deals. I swear the whole city of Cleveland will be there. There's going to be a firefighter conference there and Lord knows how many bachelor and bachelorette parties. A buddy from Oberlin asked me to fill in at one of his chapels as an Elvis officiant and I don't see how I can turn that down. Cheap airfare, nice hotel, and getting paid.
I need to get away from the city anyway. The pre-season game against the Philadelphia Eagles lacked any offense. We won, if that counts for anything - 5-0. One field goal and a safety. We were pre-season champs in 2017 so it doesn't matter. We're playing Detroit tomorrow and they're almost as bad as we were . . . though no one since the 2008 Detroit Lions have had the perfect season.
Chapter 3
19BrownsBacker19: Hey. What'cha doing?
KWBrown19: Looking at airplane tickets on break.
19BrownsBacker19: Flying to Berea?
KWBrown19: Very funny. I can drive there, but training camp’s over. Pre-season is looking okay, though we were 4-0 in the preseason last year.
19BrownsBacker19: Detroit tomorrow for the preseason game?
KWBrown: I wish. Nope. Bridesmaid in my friend Amy's wedding. Wedding's next weekend, so there's an insane Labor Day package for her Vegas Before Vows bachelorette weekend.
19BrownsBacker19: Can I come?
KWBrown: Very funny.
19BrownsBacker19: I love Vegas. I’ll show you all the best things in Vegas. Because I've done them.
KWBrown: Did you buy hookers?
19BrownsBacker19: Not legal in Vegas. Closest one is 60 miles away. Never did that.
KWBrown: I feel better now.
19BrownsBacker19: Flights are cheap, so I stop by every few months or so.
KWBrown: I'm gonna be there in two days.
19BrownsBacker19: Want to meet up?
KWBrown19: In person??!!
19BrownsBacker19: What does ‘meet’ mean to you?
KWBrown19: Well… I don't know. You could be a teenage girl.
19BrownsBacker19: Teenage girls can't buy plane tickets or rent cars. I promise I'm under 40 and over 21.
KWBrown19: You're serious?
19BrownsBacker19: Why wouldn't I be? We’ve been talking for 8 months. I've never done anything that violated our original agreement.
...
19BrownsBacker19: Hello?
KWBrown19: Thinking
19BrownsBacker19: About what?
KWBrown19: Whether or not you’re a serial killer.
19BrownsBacker19: A serial killer with a Browns obsession? Pretty rare.
KWBrown19: Only a serial killer would know that.
19BrownsBacker19: Very funny. Let me make this easy. We meet at the Bellagio fountains on Friday at midnight. If you want to meet, wear something I’ll easily notice belonging to a Browns fan.
KWBrown19: Wear something identifying me as a Browns fan?
19BrownsBacker19: Easy as that. You can decide not to see me. It's cool, I understand. It's a risk you don't have to take.
KWBrown19: You saying I'm scared of danger?
19BrownsBacker19: Anyone with season tickets in the Dawg Pound can't be scared of danger, but I'm some online dude that you met in a dinosaur costume.
KWBrown19: I got my tickets. I'll meet you there.
Kyra logged off Twitter messenger.
“I see the face you're making,” she said. “I'm not crazy.”
The baby stared at her quizzically. At thirty-three-weeks, he didn't see more than shadows past a foot, so he wasn't accusing her of anything. He also was a good listener.
She put her phone down and washed her hands. Rather than eating during her break, she'd stayed in the NICU pod with her set of feeders and growers in the 'Happy Place' versus the critically ill section of the NICU—the 'Factory of Sadness.'
She pulled the bottle of prepared breastmilk from the freezer and noted the baby’s vitals in the chart while the milk warmed in the bottle warmer. “Congratulations, you weigh four pounds and six ounces today. You get forty milliliters of mommy milk!”
Jaxon, the baby, scrunched up his cute little face. He'd been born at thirty weeks and had graduated into an open crib. Kyra was teaching him to eat by mouth.
“It's not that bad. Cassie, Amy, and I went to school together. Think about you and the twins over there.” She referred to Johnny and Donny in the next two cribs over. “You can all graduate together and be lifelong friends. Then they can force you to go to Vegas.”
The baby dutifully opened his mouth, and she supported his chin to help him make a seal around the bottle nipple.
“19BrownsBacker19 could be nice. Very nice… but I don't have to meet him.”
Who was she kidding? She'd been single since April and talked to 19BrownsBacker19 three times a week. He was nice and funny.
Definite serial killer material. He never told her what he did. Then again, neither had she.
She knew he worked irregular hours, though lately he hadn't said very much about going to work. She doubted dinosaur was a day job.
Jaxon handled his forty milliliters beautifully, and she gave him a nice extra seven minutes of snuggling before checking his diaper and moving onto the twins, charting the entire time. Occasionally, she made a notation on an extra piece of paper to add to her many lists in her work messenger bag.
And like that, the shift was over. Her relief came in, she signed out her babies, and was thankful for the quiet night.
She drove home to Cleveland Heights with a printout of the itinerary Cassie had emailed her from the ER front desk where she was the clerk. Friday night at ten o'clock was a private party at the Coyote Ugly bar. Kyra penciled in 19BrownsBacker19 at midnight. Then she wrote down her planned number of drinks, estimating how much pre-gaming would occur before hand. She used her Maps app to figure out the distance between the New York New York and the Bellagio fountain and how long it would take on foot.
She took out her suitcase and its pre-made list of packing for 'summer girls weekend.' She'd have to swap out some of her tops for sexier ones. She added her favorite pair of sandals to the list. Not as stylish as she could have gone, but walking was important. Nothing would make her taller.
Carefully collecting the items on the list, Kyra opened the three drawers that contained Browns clothing. The majority was better suited for the winter in Cleveland, as games tended toward zero degrees with a negative wind chill rather than the 110 degrees of an August night in Vegas. She googled the anticipated nighttime temperatures.
Not much better. Ninety degrees.
She felt around the inside of the suitcase, figuring out how much space she could afford for this extra outfit. Her rhinestone Browns cheerleading uniform would fit in there.
Yep, she was doing this. She and 19BrownsBacker19 had plenty of chances to stop talking to each other. It wasn't that big a deal. Meeting a friend in Vegas while she was on a weekend.
Cassie said her standards were too high and that Kyra should have settled with a guy like Amy had. According to her friends, and her NICU nurses, and her ER nurses, and her ICU nurses, no one could ever measure up to her expectations. It wasn't Kyra's fault she needed to measure twice—or thrice—and cut once. Everything had to be in order.
Preparation, organization, implementation.
Must be why her messenger bag held forty lists, and she never cleaned it out. What if she forgot something?
Dr. Ryan Yates saw KHBrown19 had gone inactive and went back to the four online poker games he was playing. He folded one, stayed on one, and increased his bet on the two others. The last two games, he suspected the others were bluffing, so he was going to wait them out. They'd fold soon enough.
Time to buy tickets for Vegas. His laptop already had his favorite travel site bookmarked, and he flew enough to Vegas from LA that all he had to do was enter the dates. A nice deal popped up at the Palms, so he used travel points to book it for almost free and linked it with his second flight.
Even though he went to Vegas regularly, meeting a girl there was new. He'd taken Carlie twice during their eight-month relationship, but she’d whined most of the time. As if the painted-on glitz of LA was any truer than the unapologetic glitz of Vegas. Anyone who worked as a production assistant had no right to complain the fake Eiffel tower was gaudy.
That didn't even address the Browns issue. She'd been annoyed that he’d only accepted interviews in the Midwest. His family had moved to LA during his senior year of high school. The best month of his medical school was his fourth year away rotation at MetroGen. He might have done residency in LA for his parents, but he was going home.
Once he finished his four poker games, he was five hundred bucks richer and transferred it into his online bank account. Time to see about packing.
In one corner of his bedroom/office was a small pile of clothes. The shirt on top appeared clean, but he smelled it just in case. He’d would probably have to wash it before he packed.
That was a problem for tomorrow, though. If necessary, he'd buy more clothes in Vegas and carry his stuff in his remaining reusable grocery bag. He unplugged his laptop and put it on the pile cordoned off with yellow 'Caution' tape.
His doorbell rang.
Excellent; it was the moving people.
The three guys ignored that Ryan wore his bathrobe at four in the afternoon. “We're taking everything?”
“Everything except the pile in the corner.”
Ryan had consolidated his furniture into the living room last week. Eating takeout wasn't an issue, and his landlord would be excited if Ryan left a few days early.
The man checked his list. “It says we're taking the furniture to the ABC production warehouse, and four boxes are getting shipped to Ohio.”
“That is correct.” Ryan pointed to the four boxes of personal items clearly labeled with the address of his storage unit in Cleveland. An ABC exec had bought the contents of his apartment sight unseen to use as authentic doctor furniture in one of their many medical dramas.
“Anything fragile in the boxes?”
“Nope, I sold my dishes last week,” Ryan said. Since residency graduation in June, he'd been marking time in LA. His job interview back in January had the best possible outcome. The newest attending job in the MetroGen ER was his.
His other reason for attending the Perfect Season parade was to meet up with the ER doctors for lunch. Jessica Steadman had been a resident and Marcus Doyle an attending when he’d rotated at MetroGen. Jacob Carver had been on an international mission trip during that time, but he was married to the ER Chief, Dr. Manika Gupta-Carver.
Not one of them had batted an eye when he’d surprised them at their float as a T. Rex. ER doctors took care of 400-pound men named 'Tiny' dressed as Marilyn Monroe without question. A dinosaur was comparatively commonplace. Ryan would fit right in with the newly combined MetroGen hospital system's ER.
In his usual manner, he hadn't rented a place yet. His start date missed the summer housing rush, and he’d bet he could get a deal on a place that hadn't been filled. A tenant paying lower rent consistently was better than no tenant. His dollar went a lot further in Cleveland than LA.
Until he picked a place, he indulged himself by booking an extended stay at the Drury Plaza. Might as well be by Public Square and a block from First Energy Stadium. The first thing he did after signing his contract was buy season tickets for the bleacher section at the east end of the Stadium—home of the notorious Dawg Pound. He had to go about it in a roundabout fashion, since those were the most loyal fans and those seats the hardest to get tickets for, but it cost far less than he was prepared to pay.
0-16 did shake the faith of the stoutest hearts.
His original plan had been to meet KHBrown19 there. It was a public enough place for a first meeting, and it would celebrate their commonalities. Not that he had a clue what she looked like or what she did. He could tell she wasn't very tall and not massively heavy. Everything else had been a mystery beneath her heavy Browns jacket.
She definitely wouldn't be wearing that in Vegas. He was dying to see what she wore from her often-referenced wide array of Browns clothing.
He wondered if she’d realized he hadn't volunteered to wear Browns clothing. Same as he hadn't asked her for a picture. Internet dating wasn't new to him, and not one of his dates had tried to kill him yet. She wasn't wrong to hold back personal information thus far, same as he had.
Still, he had a good feeling about her. This was going to be fun.
However, just in case, he sent a text message to several Cleveland area code numbers.
Yates: Anyone doing the Vegas deal this weekend?
It had been 613 days since the last Cleveland Browns victory.
Labor Day Friday
The Bellagio, Las Vegas, Nevada
The Diary of the Chaplain at MetroGen
Friday
Vegas is the bomb. (Am I too old to say that? Is it out of style?) People call it Sin City, but it's about the human condition. Highest of highs, lowest of lows, boom or bust. All in or folding. . . I should probably not be in charge of using these terms actually. I don't really gamble.I’ve heard gambling involves letting the cards or dice fall where they may or something like that.
There were some very colorfully dressed ladies I met on my walk from the Strat to the Chapel of Love. They offered me the option of meeting them later, which I politely declined. Trying to explain that I was an officiant and a chaplain seemed to make them even more aggressive, though they seemed disappointed that I wasn't a priest.
Chapter 4
“I can live dangerously,” Kyra said to herself.
It was close to midnight, and she was standing against the faux marble fence at the Bellagio. The final show of the night with the Star Spangled Banner had finished.
People walking by mostly ignored her. A few people checked twice, but it was Vegas, so she wasn't that out of place. Not many Black women wore rhinestone Browns cheerleading uniforms with orange hair extensions, though.
As a huge Browns fan, she always picked Browns clothing for casual day at work and had six pairs of Browns scrubs. Three different supervisors had warned her about her orange eye shadow and hair. Fortunately, the nurse managers never minded putting them in their place. If boobs weren't showing, it was still tasteful.
The cheerleading uniform did not count as tasteful. She was a solid 38 D and weighed about one thirty. It was having an unintended effect on a specific subset of men.
A fourth guy asked if she was trolling for clients. A sixth guy offered her money for stripping.
“No.” She wished she were good at the mythical 'angry Black woman stare.' Usually hers came off as a 'short Black woman needing help opening pickle jar' grimace.
More people passed by, and she wished she had a photo of 19BrownsBacker19. After messaging her all day that he was in town, he'd better arrive wearing a Browns clown costume.
It had been an eventful day as it was, and Kyra hadn't told her friends about her private adventure. They had their hands full with Caroline, another teacher from Amy's school. When Kyra left the club, the six-foot-tall and perpetually shy Caroline was swapping spit with her neighbor, Jamie, who was in town for a firefighter conference.
The copious application of alcohol made that possible. The same way that Kyra bent her rule and had a third drink at the Coyote Ugly bar before she made her escape.
A youngish White guy in dark-washed jeans and a white button-down dress shirt stopped in front of her. “Hi.”
