He grit his teeth. Tomorrow was another audition. Tomorrow, the dog would talk. It had to.

He put in two of his three silver dollars, held back the last, then pulled the bandit's handle.

Whirr...
The Cherries
  Cherries
  Lemon that snapped up were as painful as a poke in the eye. He swooned when he saw the row of Bells on the

$3 Play line: if only he had played all three coins, he would have won $8,000!

"Grrrrr!" he growled, fumbling to stuff in his last buck. But the audition he had tomorrow froze his arm. His hand shook--if he didn't feed the Dog, it wouldn't even go to the audition, let alone speak. Speak words--his siren, his savior that had turned to bite him--words that in the mouth of the Dog were gold but in his only clay. A sickness came over him like he hadn't felt since the time he tried to kick his drinking habit. Trembling, he stepped back.

"The Dog! The god-damned Dog!" he swore, storming away. He tromped past the piano-bar, past Caesar's Banquet--Lavish Buffet Dinner, 99¢!--past a body builder dressed like an Egyptian slave. The show girl Jimmy tried to sleep with the other night was also there, posed as one of the human statues Caesar's always had in the casino. The star of the statues, she was dressed in a Cleopatra costume and stood on a tall pedestal at the center of the room, rotating.