A green olive pokes its head through what little is left of her martini. She knows I’m here, waiting for the rest of her story, the hard part, the part she dares not talk about. She doesn’t care. So few of them do. For absence and loss are cousins at best.

It is almost daylight outside, though no hint will ever make it past the door. Jazz standards drift back from the cabaret at the far end toward the bar. She lets out a sigh followed by a deep breath.

And the band plays……

I’m Through with Love

And I need to care for no one…

And so I’m through with love…

Six, four, seven. Three numbers I’ll never forget.

It seemed a little trite to me. The whole second chance, Fantasy Island, start over from the beginning bullshit. If I could have turned back, I…but…that was never really an option. This place doesn’t…I mean, he warned me…told me there was no…

Once I had made my decision, had taken the first step, I was carried down. I was on this long escalator diving into a casino. The casino. The casino where we had met.

She was there, of course. Sitting at the same slot machine where she had won god knows how much. Where she had turned around to see me staring. Where she had lit up the room with her smile, grabbed my hand, and taken me on a spending spree that would leave us in a penthouse suite in each other’s arms, her winnings not nearly enough to pay the enormous tab that would show up in the morning.

All I had to do was walk away. Turn around and go back the way I had come. Pretend I had never met her. Start over again, this time without her. Fully wipe her from my life.

If only.

For there was no exit, of course. And there was no starting over.

At the bottom of the escalator, I looked for its partner with no luck. No rising escalator, no stairs, no exit signs. Just flashing lights and gamblers as far as the eye could see. I walked in the opposite direction of where she was dropping tokens to get as far away as possible but kept ending up with fucking Clara just at the edge of my vision. As if the whole scene was designed to drive us together, rather than apart.

I walked that place for hours. Put down too many drinks. Lost what little money I had. I asked any number of official looking people for the way out, but it was a dream without a map.

And the whole time, Clara kept pulling at the damned slot machine.

I gave in.

I walked over to her, fully expecting her to have no idea who I was. If this was some second chance, some magic Fantasy Island lesson-to-be-learned thing, it would be just like the first time we met. I would be standing behind her, looking over her shoulder when the jackpot hit, and it would start all over again...

I began to wonder if what I needed was a second chance after all.

If only.

She sensed me behind her and turned, stared dead in my eyes.

This is your fault, she said. I said I never wanted to see you again, and I meant it.

It hit me like a shock wave. I stared back, my heart racing, feeling for all the world like I’d just been caught red handed in some crime, though maybe with no idea of what the crime was. Maybe.

In shame, which is all I ever feel anymore, I turned my back on her and walked away. There are no straight paths in that place, at least not for long, but I put her behind me as best I could without looking back.

Put her behind me.

I’d been trying so long.

In that maze of a place, though, I never had a chance. Every time I turned a corner, there she was in the distance, at that same machine. No sign of an exit. No stairs. Just that damned escalator coming down from above.

And yes, I tried. I tried tried tried to walk up the escalator.

That place is a dream. Not a nightmare. Just a dream. A normal, pedantic, everybody-has-it dream. A shaggy dog story with no ending and no way out, and in the middle, always Clara.

I know this isn’t what you…you don’t care about any of this. All you want to know is…alright. Here’s how it works. You go up to the craps table and bet it. Just bet it. All of it. They won’t take less. If you win, you can…but you won’t win. There is no winning. You lose. Everyone loses. And when you do…

Except, here’s the thing. Before you can bet it, you must have it. That’s the curse, even more than…because they know. They know if you have it to bet or not. When I walked up there, when I gave in the second time, stopped looking for a way out and just accepted that this maze of dream was my new home and sat down at that cursed table, they knew I had nothing to bet.

The croupier did not speak, but the words poured from his eyes. Come back when you’re worthy.

The next time I walked up to Clara, I didn’t wait for her to speak.

“I know I should have trusted you, but it wasn’t that simple. Everything you said that night, everything you did was like a steel pipe to my shins. Like I didn’t matter to you at all. Like I was just a clever story for you to tell, a story with no feelings, no care, no love. You’ve said over and over again that you didn’t mean anything by it, that you did it for our sake. That you were wildly uncomfortable, and that you just needed to make conversation, get him to believe in you, in us, that a few jokes at my expense were a small price to pay, but…damn you it was never about the stupid stories. It was that…I mean…it was always so easy for you to sacrifice me, to throw me under the bus, any bus. I was always the first to go, had be the strong one, the one who could take it, but the minute I…even just a…it just became so brutally clear that you never loved me for me. Our love was always and only about you. And I just can’t…couldn’t, I mean…I had to get out before I disappeared altogether.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I mean that after all I did to hurt you, after bowing down like a fucking dog to all those assholes, after making a fool of myself night after night, licking one boot after another, flirting with men that made me want to fucking vomit, while all I could think of was getting home to you, to getting back to our quiet apartment where we could finally be alone, away from all that bullshit, after destroying you by daring to make a better life for us, after breaking your heart by giving up every ounce of integrity I had left so we might be able to put all the crap behind us and finally be what we’ve been working for, after you finally gave up and kicked me on the way out for good measure, why are you putting me through this again?”

“Because I was trying to…”

Except I didn’t even know what I was trying to do. I loved her and I hated her and I cared for her and I despised her and I wanted her and I wanted her and I wanted her…

And I broke. I got down on my knees and apologized. Apologized for not trusting her. For taking myself too seriously. For not being strong enough. For needing more than she could give. I groveled at her feet. Told her how lonely I had been. How much I had missed her. How I couldn’t stop thinking about her no matter how hard I had tried. How I was ready to give up on love forever rather than live with the pain of missing her.

And I forgave her.

And she forgave me.

And we kissed.

I thought, alright, this is it. This is the Fantasy Island moment. This is when the exit appears. When I turn around to see the up escalator was there all along, just waiting for us to walk out hand in hand, my capacity to love still intact, lesson learned, all that.

If only.

You see, Clara was never one to…I mean…she talked a good game, but she never really liked to go home early, snuggle in quiet nights at the apartment. She reveled in…well, just reveled, I guess. She dragged me around the casino, played a little this and that, kept me up late which I…you see…I mean, I didn’t even care. I thought I had lost everything, and yet, here she was, holding my hand, dragging me around that cursed place, and I thought…I could stay here forever, happy, in love…love…

Because of course she did. Of course she took me to the table. That table. Of course she won and won and won. Of course she kissed me and held my hand and smiled and beamed and told me how happy she was that we were back together. Of course I melted and dreamed about us staying happy forever.

And of course I felt the voice coming from the croupiers eyes, telling me we could be.

I stared back at him, then at Clara. She had started flirting with the others at the table. Let herself be the beauty everyone stared at. Was pretending not to know me to a complete stranger who had given her his attention.

And the voice told me we could be happy forever. That love is forever. That love takes sacrifice. That one must dare. Must risk. That for the chance to love forever, one must risk losing love forever. One must risk. One.

And I took the bet on a six. A good bet.

Then a four turned up and I wondered what I had done.

The next roll was the end of my life.

Six, four, seven.

The croupier swept the table. Whatever voice had come from his eyes was gone. Whatever connection the two of us had was gone. He was simply a croupier, and I just another loser at the table, a strange emptiness seeping into me, wondering what to do next.

I turned to Clara, but she was gone. She had always been gone. A chimera, a ghost around only long enough to bring me to that place. To the edge of the great abyss in which what little love I had was now forever falling.

And now I’m…you see it’s not really…like you, I came here to abandon my heart. I thought I could forget her, rid myself of the pain. I thought I would rather never love again than feel the heartache of losing her.

Never did I imagine I could lose one without losing the other.