Exactly sixteen minutes later, the tables had turned and the news was grim.
“I can’t believe I’m down to four bucks,” Harmony complained.
“Maybe try a different slot machine?”
“No! You never do that. It’s bad luck.” She nodded her head, quite sure of herself.
“Wait. So you’re just going to sit here until you run out of money entirely?”
“Well, not entirely. But forthismoney, yeah. Like, I won’t add any more cash to this machine.”
“But you’ll blow through the last four dollars, no problem,” I wondered.
Harmony shrugged. “I still have faith in her!” she declared, patting the side of the machine as if it were some kind of domesticated farm animal. Sure enough, it landed on CHERRY-CHERRY-DOUBLE DIAMOND. “You see?”
“How much was that?”
“Four bucks! Just doubled my money, thank you very much.” She patted the side of the slot machine. “Good job, Double Diamond,” she said to it.
“You know the machine can’t hear you, right?”
“Shush,” she told me, waving away my judgment with a giggle.
Another seven minutes later, Harmony was taking her last spin, worth a paltry thirty-five cents. “Couldn’t even get the whole amount for one final try. Bummer,” she lamented. DOUBLE BAR-CHERRY-DOUBLE DIAMOND came up. “Let’s go,” she announced, standing up from her seat. “My luck is terrible. Maybe you should have played instead.”
“I told you, I don’t really gamble.”
“Exactly. They say beginners get all the luck.”
“Should we test your theory?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’ll be hard to get two machines next to each other. This place is packed.”
I pointed to an empty section. “Not over there,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she warned. “Nope. Those are the high-roller machines.”
“Ah, I see.”
“They’re like twenty bucks a spin,” she explained.
“Too rich for my blood.” We walked through that section of the casino, headed toward the exit. I stopped in front of a machine called The Music Maker. Instead of diamonds and bars and traditional casino fare, this one had musical notes on it. “You ever play this one?”
“No way! It’s five bucks.”
“I’m going to try it.”
“What? You’re crazy.”
“I think I have a five-dollar bill,” I said. “Hang on.” I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and sure enough, there was a five spot. I slid it into the machine.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “You can’t even play the max bet with that! You can only play a single line across the middle.”
“I know.” I shook my head. “This is one hundred percent a mistake, right?” Still, I couldn’t stop grinning.
“It’s not too late, you know. You can still just hit the Print Ticket button and cash out.”
I nodded. “But I like this machine. I have a good feeling about it.”
