The Fourth
I hope you all had a fun Fourth of July. I didn’t.
Originally I was going to work a short shift near my home, then head out to a barbecue, but at the last minute I was called to do a double shift in the city. This sort of thing happens. OTB is actually open 362 days a year, the only three excluded being Christmas, Easter, and of course, Palm Sunday. On the bottom of the totem pole, I’m expected to work all major holidays, and even those with seniority find it hard to get out of it. The reasoning behind this is that since everyone else has off, they’re free to come and bet, and we’ll actually be busier than normal. So far, this has yet to be proven in one way or the other. Some holidays it’s completely dead, some holidays it’s about the same, and some days it is actually a little busier. Once in a while a lot busier.
The worst was Thanksgiving when I had to work on 38th street… literally on the Macy’s parade route. It took me a half hour to navigate through the crowd, illegally duck under police barricades, and talk my way past a few mounted officers so I could get access to the building. I wasn’t surprised when I got there that two dozen customers were already inside, seemingly unfazed by the mass of people and obstacles blocking them from the race at Penn National. To top it off, I had to sit in front of a load-bearing pillar, blocking my otherwise perfect second-story view of the parade. All morning I would see only glimpses of Garfield’s ear or Spongebob’s Squarepants, possibly the biggest float tease of all time.
For the day half of my double shift this weekend, I was put in the high rollers’ room, their own personal bet-puncher. It was just four of them, but they spent, won and lost more than everyone else downstairs combined, and tipped me more than I’ve made maybe all year. They had their own fancy room upstairs, and were allowed to have food delivered in, kind enough to give me their leftover fries and Haagen Dazs. They only played one or two tracks, and barely seemed like they enjoyed themselves, though they definitely weren’t half-assing it. They had the tracks on speed-dial on their cells, calling the numbers to find out which jockeys had switched horses and other details that to most people (even bettors) wouldn’t matter. One of the guys had a Puerto Rican girl who was definitely younger than me, maybe too young, who didn’t speak a word of English. I don’t think she was a hooker, I think it was more of a sugar-daddy relationship. She drank a six pack of coronas by herself (the guys didn’t drink while they bet) and every once in a while when prompted would say “Uno” or “Ocho” and the guys would tell her those were terrible horses and that she didn’t know how to bet. (Uno and Ocho ended up winning those races, the guys losing a few thousand altogether.) Another weird thing I noticed, sitting with my machine right in front of the bathroom, was that she took like three huge shits throughout the afternoon. Not sure what that was about. Don’t really want to know.
So for the first time maybe ever, I didn’t see a single firework the entire day. And, as expected, the night shift was dead and I didn’t even need to be there. But that’s how we do holidays at OTB, basically like how we do everything else: Lonely and miserable, with the occasional fat tip.
The only other lowlight of the weekend was this customer I’ve never seen before. He was in his fifties or sixties, your typical Staten Island Italian-American guy. He was nice enough, bullshitting about stuff he had absolutely no expertise in, throwing a few HowYouDoin’s in for good measure. But for some reason he was wearing a sleeveless fishnet see-through shirt—yeah, that kind—and cutoff jeans that really, really cut off. It was quite possibly the most disturbing juxtaposition anyone could ever imagine. I don ‘t know if he wore them thinking that was the style, or was just trying to keep cool in the heat, or was given them as a gift by some cruel, cruel grandchild, but in any case, there were also what looked to be claw marks scratched through the back, and no answer will ever be as satisfactory as it needs to be.
