City of a thousand dreams, graveyard of worry until the oncoming morrow, Las Vegas spread as gleaming gold under Night’s cloak. Within the city, among the towering edifices, standing in the entrance to The Templeton Casino and Suites’s parking garage, Dale Carmichael was neither a poet, nor in a position to see the vast city stretch out before him. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and sighed. Jerking the lapel of his ill-fitting uniform straight again, he wandered back into the attendant station. The small booth reminded him of his apartment near the edge of the city, both being of equal size. And both coffee makers locked on the too-weak-to-caffeinate-a-cockroach setting. And the walls of the booth were thicker. And the booth had a television, albeit broken.

Dale ignored the groan of the chair as he sat down upon it. Management said replacing chairs on their last legs wasn’t high on their list of priorities unless he was a patron or worked in the gaming areas. Resigned to the ultimatum that if he didn’t want his rent checks bouncing, he supposed the depressed chair would be his friend for a long while yet. Dale picked up the battered copy of Les Miserablés his girlfriend gave him and opened it to the place he left off. “At that moment,” he read, “she suddenly felt that the bucket was gone. A hand, which seemed enormous to her, had just caught the handle, and was carrying it easily.”