“Pay up, pal.” It is another miscreant: a little taller, with a clearer complexion, and only the trace of a Spanish accent.

“What’re you talkin bout?” To the driver’s surprise, his retort doesn’t come out half as threateningly as he thought it might. Instead, it sounds genuinely shocked, as if he truly requires clarification as to the nature of this shakedown.

“Ya heard me, ten percent of your earn.”

While it seems understandable to the driver that he might be cleaned out of some of his winnings when they are earned in a card game comprised of criminals, in a grimy casino, surrounded by these tic-on-a-shit looking fellas, it strikes him as odd that the amount demanded is so low.

“What for?” That was a shot across the bow, even though it seems superfluous to ask a thug why he wants your money. The haze from the alcohol, distinct from the hanging, blue cigar smoke, is so thick in front of his eyes, he believes for an instant that he may be dreaming this entire exchange. Then he remembers that he hasn’t has an opportunity to dream, or sleep, going on forty hours. The thought suddenly make him nauseous.

“I’ve had too much ta drink. No I haven, they made them drinks too strong. Or else put sumpin in’em.” This thought is enough to elicit the panicked paranoia of the drugged and non-drugged alike; and like all of those who find themselves in such a too-bizarre-to-be-anodyne situation, the driver attempts to reason his way out. If only those cola-concoctions hadn’t been so thick and vile –though not enough to stop him from steadily sucking down four or five in a row.

The driver slurs to himself: “Why go through th’trouble of lettin’ me in th’game, juss ta rob me? An at ten percent?! Why not take it all?” Only one part of this refrain is able to cut through the noxious stew of cigar smoke, alcohol, and exhaustion. The low, but very business-sounding, ten percent keeps ringing around the driver’s mind. Simple tasks of multiplication and subtraction stumble over themselves, and the numbers pile up into a mess of dollar bills: ones, fives, and those few precious tens; all into a precarious pot.