We Close at Midnight

I have run this hall forty years, and the best thing about it has nothing to do with the tables. It is the lock on the front door.

At midnight I flip the chairs, I count the drawer, I tell the last two stragglers to go home to their wives, and I turn the key. Whatever was happening in here stops happening. Not because anybody found willpower. Because the building closed.

Every gambling room I ever worked out of had that. The card rooms had it, the tracks had it, even the ugly basement games had a fellow who eventually said that is it, boys. There was always a moment when the thing ended without you having to be the one to end it. I did not appreciate that back then. I thought it was the enemy. Now I understand it was the only thing standing between me and a much longer night.

The young fellows in here show me their phones and there is no key. No chairs going up. No fellow saying that is it. Three in the morning and there is a soccer match in Australia and a number next to it, and the whole thing is designed so that the question of whether to stop never once gets asked out loud. It just keeps offering. Politely. Endlessly.

I want to be careful here, because I am not calling anybody weak. I am saying I lost a house in rooms that closed at two. Rooms that never close are a different animal and I am not sure any of us have the callus for it yet.

So if you use those things, I would only ask you this. Where is your midnight? Not a dollar amount, a time. Something you decide when you are calm and bored and nothing is riding on it, because that is the only version of you who gets a real vote.

And if you already know your midnight came and went a long while ago, 1-800-MY-RESET is answered by folks who understand rooms that do not close.

Turn the key on something tonight. Anything.

Sal