Warren James took his chips to the cage and set them in front of the clerk. She handed him a twenty and four ones.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night, Sheila.”

He walked toward his car, stopped under a yellow lot lamp. He turned around and walked back to front of the casino. There were four men and one woman smoking. None of them talking.

“Can I bum one?”

A man silently handed him a cigarette and held out his lighter. Warren lit the cigarette and handed it back.

“Thanks.”

The man nodded silently, exhaling smoke through his nose.

Warren turned and faced the building, inhaled deeply on the cigarette, but barely pulled any smoke into his lungs. More like a cigar. He looked up at the lighted sign on the building, which read simply “24/7” and exhaled, pushing the smoke out.

After he finished three quarters of the cigarette, he dropped it on the ashcan pebbles without stubbing it out and walked to his car.

They called him Mitts, but Mike Harris didn’t like the nickname. Years ago, at the final table of the $200 monthly tournament, he had bet half his chips on the turn, and the only player remaining had folded. He tossed his cards to the muck, but fumbled them. They turned up, showing his bluff. Just two hands later he repeated the mistake, this time with pocket aces, and a grizzled rounder called Nguyen had dubbed him Mitts. There were enough spectators that night to help the name stick.

Tonight was an average night in the room, and he was ready for a swim. Harris walked to the cashier and pocketed the $550 she gave him, nesting it with the five black chips that he had walked in with.

He walked out past the smokers, and found his car. When he got back to his house he swam laps for 45 minutes before bed.

Veronica Clay wasn’t in her usual room. She had been playing at the Bike, and occasionally in Commerce, for years. Tonight she had decided to make the trek north to Ventura. The room was small, but there was enough action from the Hell’s Angels on Wednesdays to make it worthwhile. She recognized the advantage in a petite woman in taking money from a brutish biker in his road leather. The grinders in East L.A. wouldn’t give her so much leeway at the table.

$2500 later she looked at her watch. It was 3:00. Their legal buzz would start to wear off, and the illicit one was more dangerous if more valuable. She overbet her middle pair and sloughed $150 back to the table. She threw a chip to the dealer and stood up.

“C’mon sweetie, there’s more fun after the game.” The smallest of the four was being called “Tiny” by his friends all night.

“I don’t like to bet big after a losing hand,” she commented over her shoulder and hoped that it wouldn’t sink in until she was cashed out and heading to her car. She knew better than antagonize too much.

As she drove east she listened to PJ Harvey loud on the stereo and sucked on an e-cig. The engine of her Acura hummed at eighty-five on the flat and barely purred on the incline.

As she rolled past the exit for Balboa Boulevard her decision had been made, but when she parked at the bar she waited in her car for another twenty minutes. His car was in the lot before hers. She nodded to the bartender as she made her way to the bar stool and he gave a nod in return. She sat down next to Warren James.

When the woman sat down next to him, the bartender had just pushed a second Jack and soda to Warren. Looking into the glass as he took a drink, he noticed her legs and decided he’d better wait before turning his head to look at her face, in case he noticed the pause before the sip he took.

As he did, he heard her say, “Gin and tonic, no lime.”

He set the glass down and exhaled lightly, then looked at the bottles obscuring the mirror behind them so that he could only make out the brunette hair pulled tightly into a short ponytail. Finally, he turned to his left, where she was looking back at him.

“Howdy.” He said it with a slight nod.

She responded, “howdy,” and it came out more like a question than the statement he’d made.

“Having a good evening?” The whiskey loosened him up, but the arch in her eyebrow put him at ease fully.

The bartender set her drink down and she quietly said, “thank you,” before turning back to Warren. “Pretty good. You?”

“Yeah, long day at the office.” Warren smiled and he thought she was returning it.

“Me too. What do you do for work?”

“I gamble.”

“Really, like on horse racing, or sports?” She leaned toward him.

“Cards, actually. Poker.” He liked saying it like this. Just enough info to maintain the questions coming in.

“Wow. That’s amazing, you must be good at it.”

“It pays the bills. How about you? What brings you out so late on a Thursday?”

“A long day at the office for me as well.”

“And what do you do?” Warren leaned forward as she leaned back a little.

“Real estate.”