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Bad Saturday.
 Some
years ago on Holy Thursday, the night before Good Friday, I
was at the casino having an unholy good time. Drinking and gambling,
on filthy feet. And winning! But midnight arrived and they closed
the place up. Gambling is banned on Good Friday, so everyone
left the casino using the Lord's name in vain.
Ever since, I have wondered what happens when the casino reopens.
What happens when Good Friday gives way to the next day? Bad
Saturday.
I spruced myself up to find out. I donned my latest op shop suit; a brown plaid sort of a number. I wore a shimmering gold shirt and a tie showing pictures of playing cards. I used to wear the tie when I worked in door to door sales, peddling restaurant vouchers. The tie made the product look good. Suit, shirt and tie and not one natural fibre. Every item, one hundred percent polyester. Zero percent class.
I drove off in an old model Camry, my hire car for the Easter weekend, picking up a photographer friend along the way. I had coerced him to come by promising to bring my spare change jar and put up a few bets. He nursed the jar in his lap as we drove.
"There's quite a bit in this jar," he said. "It's pretty heavy."
"Stop complaining, it's fine."
"And that's a mighty fine suit you've got there."
"Thank you," I preened.
"Did it come free with the car, or the other way round?"
We arrived at Sky City at about eleven thirty. There were half a dozen young men cursing at the door. A sign announced that the place was closed until ten o'clock the next morning. Bad Saturday likes to sleep in. The men departed and two others approached with broad collared shirts nestling on hairy chests.
"It's Good Friday," I offered. "Casino's closed."
"We know it's Good Friday," said one of the men tapping the crucifix on his neck.
"I guess we'll have to do something else," said the other peering in.
"You could cast lots for my clothes."
They stared. "Just who the hell do you think you are?"
I made haste in polyester, dropping off my photographer, and going home to dream of cities and casinos and castles in the sky.
Morning came, overcast and heavy air; my photographer and I drove back to the den. In polyester, with change jar, we decided to avail ourselves of all that Adelaide's tenth largest employer had to offer. We pulled up at the valet.
"Don't worry," I said. "No kids in the boot."
"Yes sir."
"Just a big bag of fertilizer," chipped in my photographer.
"Very good sir."
Seventeen bucks worth of availment. The place had not even opened and we were chasing losses already. We waited in the main foyer, watching cleaners vacuum what was once a grand entrance, now carpeted dank.
A middle aged man padded around in loafers and slacks clutching a card with a roulette wheel printed on it. A tool for plotting independent random events. Staff were arriving. They were easy to pick from the punters, moving quickly with purpose and heads held up high. And they were young.
Joe Public was an old man in a faded shirt and long trousers.
Women wore pastel suits with big broaches. They all looked like
they were part of a tour group being forced to view contemporary
art. They shuffled about trying to measure themselves, glancing
around at the walls, and only when they felt they had projected
enough ambiguous presence, they looked to the entrance. Security
stood, looking back all the while.
No one wanted to appear too expectant, but everyone forgot themselves as the clock ticked down. The security guards started to twitch. A crowd gathered before them. Sixty or so, in number and average age.
The doors flew open! Easter was transformed into the post Christmas sales! Everyone streamed in, hustling and jostling for a place on the escalator that would take them up to their bargain priced fortunes.
I tried to keep track of the woman who was first through the doors, but lost sight of her while we were queuing at the cloakroom. The staff were friendly there, familiar with the regulars, and encouraging to boot.
"I want to hear some coins dropping today, okay!"
We cloaked our camera and went on the hunt. We were looking for a woman in a blue mu mu with a plaster cast on her wrist. RSI, heaven forbid.
It took some searching, but we found her. At the one cent pokies, bless her heart. Actually, she was at the one tenth of a cent pokies. Ten bucks from my coin collection bought ten thousand credits and no more than ten minutes. We watched the number one ticket holder as we played. She was happy feeding dollar coins through her machine, cashing out small wins, and injecting them back in. She talked to herself or the machine or something up there.
"Let's go to the tables."
We took my coin collection down to the cashiers, but they do not go in for such small fry and we were ordered back up to the pokies where there was a change machine we could use. We sat at the pokies again, my photographer and I, pumping coins into the change machine. I found it difficult, coordination-wise.
"Look, it's like digging a hole!" said my friend with the eye. "Take it in turns."
For fifteen minutes we shoveled coins. Punters filled the poker machines around us, seemingly attracted to the sound of shovelled coins. One hundred and fifty bucks worth of coins.
"There was quite a bit in that jar," I said.
"You bet!" gleamed my photographer.
We went to the tables. They attracted a broader clientele, a real mixed demographic, and we joined them to share in the dark sense of excitement that comes from such an improbable place. A world without light or air that promises "to ensure our customers have an exciting experience, no matter when they visit."
The clock struck midday. It could well have been midnight in that place: with money and precious life wasting away, we agreed to cut our losses and go. We changed everything back into coins (for my laundromat money) and left with a loss of one hundred dollars. Every South Australian man, woman and child loses about that much at Sky City every year. It felt good on Bad Saturday to know we had done our little bit.
Anthony Jucha
Photograph by JJ Maruff
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