Chapter 8

The next pen to return was a royal blue monogrammed pen belonging to the Royal Blue Royale Hotel and Casino-a place for the highest of rollers with enough neon light to keep the very sun from setting. For winners, anyway.


The old man was not much of a gambler, but something intrigued him about watching chance turn destiny on a dime, or a quarter to be more exact. 


The return seemed rather uneventful. He walked past the busy rows of men and women feeding hungry slots and say one vomiting it's lucre into an unflinching patron's bucket. Then he pulled out his pen and paused for a few moments to watch a bearded man lose big at a poker table. Having returned the pen to the counter where it came from, and made his way to the exit, he stepped outside, right into a punch that knocked the wind out of him until he passed out.


The next thing he knew he was on a couch in a smokey and dim hotel room.


"Who are you working for?"demanded the bearded man seated opposite him, smoking and trying to douse the flames inside him with whiskey,"Bartlett?"

"I work for no one,"answered the sore old man,"That's what happens when one gets old and retires. What kind of man punches a senior citizen in the gut?"

After another puff and swig the bearded man answered,"An angry man. A desperate man. A man with nothing left, not even enough to pay this room, and certainly never retire."


"And what did I have to do with your loss?"asked the old man.


"I bet it all tonight. Everything I had..."
The old man then recognized the bearded man as the one he had seen lose at the poker table earlier.


"I paid good money for that cheat,"he continued,"Watch for the blue pen, they said. The sign I had the better hand. Now everything is gone."


The old man was about to claim his innocence when once again, words came that he did not expect. "Perhaps instead punching me, you should be thanking me," he said.


"Thanking you?! Your signal made me lose everything. I'm at rock bottom!"

"I know. Your welcome."


"I oughta punch you again. What're you talking about?"


"When you're at the bottom of a pit, what's the only direction you can look?"



The drunken man stared at the ceiling.


"He is The Way Out,"said the old man,"of the pit of addictions."


"God,"cried the bearded man falling to his knees,"Oh God, please help me!"


Then, the old man quietly left the room as the bearded man continued praying. He paid the man's room tab at the receptionist desk, leaving a note as well. "Make sure he gets this," he told the receptionist,"Oh and here's your pen back-I can't afford to run off with it again."


And with that the old man went on his way.