But on another side of life in Vegas…it’s not just in Vegas but I live here so it’s my story.

I left work and headed for a Super Wal-Mart around 3:30 a.m. There is a head in kind of parking on the other side of Handicapped Parking. It’s not really parking spaces, just diagonal lines spaced about every three feet. People park there all the time.

When I pulled in, there were three cars pulled in diagonally…no one in handicapped parking, and only two cars in the next horizontal parking lane…more cars over in the next few rows of parking but pretty isolated where I was. I parked parallel about 10 feet from and in line with the diagonally parked vehicles. After I got out, locked my truck, and started to the store, a security guard pulled up and gave me ’10 miles of lip’ about the way I parked and told me to go back and park the way I was supposed to park. I looked around the parking lot and said, “There’s no one around. I’m not blocking anything.”

Guess he had to prove that he was the boss, he continued…told me to go back and park the way I was supposed to park.

I asked, “How about this one? How about if I just leave?”

I did. There was no way I was going to go back, start my truck, park my vehicle somewhere else and then enter the store…I was in a ‘screw you’ frame of mind.

I headed up the street and stopped at an Albertsons that I frequent, about a mile from my home. When I pulled in, I saw her!

She was standing, completely alone, away from the buildings and any cars, in the parking lot, with her arms outspread towards the sky, as if asking, “God, what do I do now?”

There were four or five cars in front of the store and when I pulled up to park, she started to walk towards my truck. I did a mental ‘hell/shit’ kind of thing and headed for the store. She was about 30 yards away and I thought she would maybe just go away before I came back out.

I took my time, didn’t have much on my mind for purchases but looked at a few extra things and I was sure I was going to have to face her one way or the other when I came out.

Now you must have some idea of what’s going through my head at this point. We get panhandled all the time…they stand at street corners, busy intersections, grocery stores, even been approached when I drove through a Burger King line by someone that’s starving. Everywhere we go, some of them ‘will work for food’, some of them have sick kids to feed, some of them had a hard life and need help. So did the rest of us, we just got a job and did the best we could with what we had to do with, but back to the story.

I came out of the store and didn’t see her at first…thought I’d got lucky and she’d left. Then I saw her, leaning against a light post by a car. She hotfooted it right over to my truck. By now I was loading my purchases in my truck and I managed to glance around me, behind me as I loaded groceries…hell I would’ve hated it if she’d had a friend that was ready to hit me in the head.

She took off in a low voice and so fast that I couldn’t hear a word she said. I was cold when I stated, “I can’t hear you!”

She started over…her hotel room had been broken into, she had no way of replacing anything and this was the worst day of her life…could I just spare anything for her.

Funny part of it is that she didn’t look like your ordinary bum. She had a lime green outfit on that would’ve worked with a gym or a mall shopping spree, she appeared to be about 35, hair parted down the center and pulled into pigtails, her clothes weren’t tattered or worn, she had the dusty look of someone that had been in the heat all day and cried/sweated the dust into mud balls/swirls on the skin.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out $10. Handed it to her and she said, “God Bless you.”

I said, “No! God bless you.”

She turned and beat feet down the road, towards a corner gas station. Did she bluff me? Don’t know and don’t care. I got into my truck, with my little purchases, and cried all the way home. I cried because I was so thankful to be where I am. So happy that I have a job, a home, food, a hot shower, a place to be and I’m not out there somewhere searching…

So do you think I’m broken up if you lose when you play poker…NO! I’m not. Are you broken up when I lose when I play poker? NO! You’re not. Am I broken up that life is painful and there is a lot of anguish and misery out there that we never touch upon? Yes.

I wish I could have brought her home for a hot shower, clean clothes, and a meal. But I live alone, in a strange city, in a strange time.

*****
I was part of this project. Sweet!
Howard Lederer’s ‘Secrets of No Limit Holdem’