THE SW CASINO
By Minimizer
Chapter 9
When my shift was over, Beth came to relieve me. There weren't any more rookies in training, she explained, so the girls working the other side of the bar would cover the newbie zone for the rest of the night. That was a fairly common practice, apparently, because there weren't all that many trainees compared to actual employees.
On our way back to the restorer, Beth asked me who the cute guy had been that I'd talked to an hour or so ago. Remembering my cover story, I explained that Mark was my ex-boyfriend, who'd stopped by to make fun of my shrunken self. It was a good enough story, and if she'd seen the whole exchange on the monitor, she knew I'd looked plenty upset, at least at the start of the conversation.
I think I made a good show of being irritated and annoyed as soon as she brought him up, because she made a crack about how it was hard to believe such a good-looking guy could be such a jerk. She did, however, note that I'd seemed to warm up to him by the time our little meeting was over, wondering if perhaps he might really still be interested in me.
I denied it, of course, but not very convincingly. Besides, something else that she'd said was bothering me. I'd never really considered Mark Powers to be all that handsome or good-looking. Of course, I'd never looked at him in that way before, either. He was my partner, and because of that we'd always tried to have a professional relationship. In fact, before today, we'd never really talked to each other any way other than professionally. Thinking about it a bit more, I realized that his telling me I looked good in the uniform was completely out of character for him.
Well, anyway, I told Beth I hoped he didn't come back too often, and she said if he started causing problems, I could have him put on the "banishment list." That would ensure he never got back through the front doors. I said I didn't think that would be necessary, at least not for now, and Beth interpreted that as an indicator that there was still some spark between us. I started to argue the point, but then thought better of it and let it go. After all, I didn't want Mark completely barred, just in case he had to get another message to me later. So, by letting Beth jump to her own conclusions, I'd managed to arrange, entirely by accident, a means whereby Mark could show up at the casino to talk to me any time he wanted to, without drawing any undue suspicion to either himself or me.
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, I thought.
It was right about now that I started to regret refusing to have the two-way ear implants installed. I'd used them before, and found that because of where the receiver was mounted, they interfered with my normal hearing even when turned off. Besides, it was impossible to turn down the volume, so any time Mark spoke, it scared the crap out of me.
There was more to it, of course. The tiny transmitters in my head were shielded from detection by the latest masking technology. Casinos routinely scan people at the door for hidden weapons, cameras, and the like, not just to stop robberies or terrorists but also to protect against cheaters and con artists. Unfortunately, a two-way transmitter was a lot tougher to mask than a one-way one, and while we figured it might have been safe, I didn't want to take any chances.
Anyway, once I was back to normal size, I changed out of my costume and went out to blow off some time until six. I grabbed some food at one of the restaurants, where to my relief the servers were all normal sized. Then I just wandered through the place, checking out the various games and learning the Sidewinder's layout.
If you've never been in one of the major Vegas casinos, well, let me tell you, they're huge, even for a normal-sized person. The single floor the gaming area occupied was at least the size of a small sports stadium, and above it lay a variety of other entertainment facilities such as movie theaters, bowling alleys, and even a shopping mall. Naturally, a massive hotel was attached, with thousands of rooms and a year-round 75% or higher occupancy. It was no wonder the place was packed with people.
I walked around, trying to imagine myself serving drinks in amongst such a crowd. My tiny rookie corner looked like a babbling brook compared to these raging whitewaters. Suddenly I wasn't all that thrilled about "graduating" to the main floor, especially not if I had to work an evening shift.
I watched some of the cocktail girls meandering around, moving very quickly and dodging patrons with ease. When they had drinks, they carried three of them and sometimes four, and somehow managed to avoid spilling the glasses, even while spinning to avoid a collision with their much taller customers.
Oh, I had a long way to go--that much was obvious!
In due course I made my way over to the other gaming tables. I'd already seen the dice girls at work on the craps table, but watching them again just reinforced my idea that I had to be a little crazy to accept this assignment. The way they just ran around, collecting those huge dice and hauling them back to the shooter, made me shake my head. I just couldn't imagine myself doing that.
I moved on and came to one of the blackjack tables. While most of these were manned by full-sized people, a few used miniaturized women as dealers. I remembered Beth telling me the size factor was 20%, and that looked about right. The women pulling out the cards looked to be about a foot or so high, and were wearing the lace-up boots with low heels I'd seen in the dressing room earlier.
I saw immediately why not every blackjack table featured shrunken women, because by comparison with normal dealers, the ladies were terribly slow. The girls used a small set of levers to dispense enough cards from the "shoe" to deal to everyone at the table at once, then walked to each person in turn, flipping the cards over. This wasn't as easy as you'd think, considering each card was about a third the height of the girl dealing it!
Once the initial cards were all out, she had to collect a new batch and run down the table, asking players who needed a hit and who wanted to stay, all while keeping the cards face down so they couldn't be seen. If she ran out of cards, she had to hurry back for more. Any extras were discarded after the hand was over, dropping into a slot where they were recycled and auto-shuffled for reuse once at least half the existing cards had been dealt. All of this was handled by a machine underneath the table, and no full-sized people were involved at all.
The whole arrangement looked incredibly unwieldy and slow, but the players didn't seem to mind. Obviously, they liked watching the tiny women parade around the table, collecting chips from losers and rolling out new ones for the winners. The girls got a workout, but nothing like the sprinting that took place over at the craps table.
I also saw that they got pretty good tips, too. The blackjack table was small enough that anyone who felt like giving a tip just dropped it into the girl's slot themselves, saving her the trouble of rolling it in. The tiny woman always smiled and thanked the customer after each such gift, something I would have to practice on. I wasn't very good at showing appreciation, as you might have already guessed.
When I got tired of watching blackjack, I wandered on to one of the roulette wheels. Here, as I recalled, the reduction factor was 15%, so the ladies were about nine or ten inches high. Maybe taller, I thought when I saw one of them for the first time. This was the place where they had to wear those ridiculous stiletto-heeled thigh boots, which added quite a bit to their height.
For the ladies, the roulette table was a piece of cake compared to blackjack or craps. Unlike a standard roulette wheel, where the whole thing spun on a central axis, this had a raised platform standing over it, in which the tiny woman stood. The wheel spun underneath her, but the platform itself remained fixed. A plastic pneumatic tube built into the hub delivered the ball to her waiting hands, and when it was time to launch it, she rolled it down the beveled sides, where it dropped onto the wheel and bounced around until finally landing on a number.
Unlike the other games I'd seen so far, in this one the girl was just window dressing. A full-sized croupier managed the chips and payout, so in effect, all she had to do was look good while she collected the ball and rolled it down into the wheel. However, there was still more interaction going on than I'd seen so far. Bettors were constantly getting the tiny woman to kiss their chips for luck, or give them a suggestion for a lucky number or color. When she was right, the tips rolled in, through the slot directly to the side of the wheel itself.
The girl I was watching seemed really into the excitement of the game, cheering on her favorite customers and accepting every lame suggestion for "luck enhancement," including blowing on the ball for luck and even sitting on it or stroking it like it were a pet cat. The whole display was almost sickening, but the players really seemed to like it. If nothing else, I thought, this was a job for someone who really liked what they were doing.
Well, that pretty much ruled me out as a candidate!
Just before six, I passed by the poker area and took a brief glance at one of the tables. At first, I didn't think shrunken women were involved at all, but then I looked closer. They were there, all right, but they were only three inches high! These were the 5% tables, I remembered, and shuddered. God, the girls were so small! I could have fit one of them inside my palm with ease.
Once I got over the size thing, though, I realized the tiny ladies weren't actually doing much of anything. There must have been at least a dozen of them on the table, but they were just standing around, some of them even chatting idly among themselves. The men with the cards were betting and dealing, but the ladies didn't seem to have anything to do. They were too small to handle cards, of course, which stood as tall as they were. They probably would have had a tough time with the chips, too, which would have come up to their waist if turned on end.
After a couple of minutes I noticed that each girl seemed to be assigned to a specific person at the table, because whenever someone won, the ladies in front of him would shout and celebrate. Were they just being cheerleaders, I wondered? After what the tiny girls had to go through at the other tables, that didn't seem right to me.
However, that was the only theory I could come up with from my brief observations. Before I could figure out what was really going on, I realized it was six o'clock and headed off to the bowling alley.
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For the ladies, the roulette table was a piece of cake compared to blackjack or craps. Unlike a standard roulette wheel, where the whole thing spun on a central axis, this had a raised platform standing over it, in which the tiny woman stood. The wheel spun underneath her, but the platform itself remained fixed. A plastic pneumatic tube built into the hub delivered the ball to her waiting hands, and when it was time to launch it, she rolled it down the beveled sides, where it dropped onto the wheel and bounced around until finally landing on a number.