It emerged from the sea like Botticelli's Venus, glittering, a goddess. From the safety of his window seat, Len could feel the East Coast Babylon calling him down. The siren-like enchantment of a million lights and mirrors, the ringing of bells, the squeals of triumph and disaster, the clinking of coins and clacking of chips, the dice rolling, cards flipping, wheels turning, the sequins and tuxedos, the smell of money, in a word, the action.  It was the action Lenny craved and till now it had always been small time. It was his last stab at beating the game, playing smart, breaking the dealer.

They had always called him Lenny the Weasel, not that he was particularly cunning or sneaky or even that his appearance suggested a weasel. If anything, he looked like a tourist. He always looked like he was visiting from somewhere else. His clothing was always a bit too loud, his pants a bit too short, his hat a bit too ridiculous, but this was Lenny, and Lenny had always dressed this way.

It didn't bother him to know that his friends pointed at him and sniggered, a forty-five year old named Weasel lacked dignity, but he felt secure in the aura of mystery the moniker shrouded over him. No one could remember where the nickname had originated or why. Only Lenny knew, and he wasn't telling, because it was his own creation, an excuse to be noticed, a loud tie and gaudy suit that no one could ignore.

Lenny the Weasel was dying, the final break, the big bust. He had sat down on the day he learned of his body's treachery and thought of all the gambling terms that could apply to death and ultimately, as a gambler, it made the whole thing easier to accept. He couldn't relate to 'terminal' this or that, yet to think of himself as rolling snake eyes, crapping out, landing on the big double zero, that he could understand, even appreciate. Life was a gamble, and as a gambler he knew that the next best thing to gambling and winning was gambling and losing.

He took every penny he had out of the bank, almost $30,000, most of it from his wife's insurance policy (she had died three years ago while he was in Vegas at a poker tournament. She was the biggest stake he had ever lost, that one big loss that you anguish over till the day you die). He imagined himself dramatically collapsing at the roulette wheel or hitting the big progressive slot machine jackpot just as his heart stopped beating.

As the tiny propeller plane set down at the outskirts of Atlantic City, Lenny the Weasel smiled his first serious smile in over three years. He was finally doing the right thing, the gambler's thing.

Atlantic City itself was not large. Given the time or inclination, Lenny could have walked pretty much anywhere he liked. The little airfield was located just outside the city. It occurred to the Weasel that there were actually two Atlantic Cities. The first was the Atlantic City of the boardwalk, the resorts and casinos, the tourists and scantily clad cocktail waitresses, the money and the Mercedes.

The second Atlantic City was larger than the first. It began three blocks from the boardwalk; this was the Atlantic City of the poor and forgotten. For every resort casino, there were a dozen dilapidated wooden buildings housing too many people with too little room. For every big time crook, there were a dozen small time hoods robbing the poor. For every realized dream, there were a thousand frustrated hopes.

They had built the modern Babylon just three blocks wide and the only wall that protected it was made of money, but money is often a stronger barrier than steel. Atlantic City was a dinosaur, part board game, part golden memory. The rich had played there, it was the resort center of the east, a northern Miami. It was Park Place, Ventnor Avenue and the railroads. It was Boardwalk (then and now, the most valuable of properties), it was a glow on the coast. It was dead. It had died, and the resort owners, like Dr. Frankenstein, had run electricity through the corpse, returning it to life, stronger yet less human. Lenny the Weasel loved Atlantic City. He got into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to his hotel, the casino at the end of the Boardwalk, at the end of the strip, at the end of his life.

Lenny was not sure where to begin. Having checked into his room, he wandered aimlessly for awhile through the cavernous casino-hotel, avoiding the casino itself until he felt 'ready.' He strolled outside on the boardwalk, where a flood of visiting tourists packed the avenue, parting upon occasion for the small trains transporting visitors from one gaming house to the next, like so many Christians to the lions. He passed Caesar's Palace, which even had men dressed in centurion garb opening the doors for the daily sacrifices.

The Weasel stopped and purchased some lottery tickets as his first official act of gambling. He was ready to hit the casino. He felt deep into his pockets for the packets of money already glowing red-hot in his pants.

It would be Caesar's first. He entered the hotel and made his way to the casino entrance, the sound of bells and people increasing with every step. Then, all at once he was in. It was an enormous room with high mirrored ceilings and opulent columns. The length and width of a football field, it was crowded with humanity. Cocktail waitresses, dressed like slave girls gave free drinks to the players to help them lose less painfully.

The center of the room was where the gaming tables sat. Craps, roulette, blackjack; each crowded with a wide range of full-time and part-time gamblers. All around the perimeter of the room was a moat of slot machines occupied by surgeons and grandmothers, laymen and lawyers, each guarding their particular machine with the fervor of a woman for her newborn child. It was the slots that provided the score of the symphony that was Atlantic City, the ringing of bells, spinning of wheels and jingling of coins. It was the people who provided the chorus, yelling, moaning and laughing. Lenny was home.

He sat at the only available blackjack table he could find. The dealer had just finished a shoe of cards and was in the middle of the ritual shuffling of the six decks of cards with which they played.

Lenny fished three thousand dollars out of his pocket, slid it towards the dealer and said, "All black."

"Changing three thousand!" the dealer yelled over her shoulder to one of the pit bosses behind her, who watched carefully as she counted out thirty black chips.

"Okay," the boss said, immediately shifting his attention to some other table.

She slid the chips in front of Lenny and completed the ritual by pushing his money into a slot and offering the Weasel a not too heartfelt wish of luck.

The premise of any gambling establishment is to let the player win, not as much as he loses, but just enough so he is satisfied. The house does not make it's money by cavalry charges, instead it holds a siege of the player's funds, slowly draining them until nothing is left. Lenny knew this. Lenny expected this. It was just the ebb and flow of  funds, the action, that he craved. But all he saw was the ebb. Trying to draw to twenty-one he would always draw too high followed by the off-hand, ominous intonation of the dealer.

"The player busts."

When he held, even with a good hand of nineteen or twenty, hoping the dealer would draw less or bust, she would invariably draw five or six cards for a total of twenty-one, smile, and take his money. He lost the entire three thousand without winning a single hand. Slightly downhearted, but still optimistic, Lenny decided it was time to try roulette.

Roulette was a fast game. The large wooden wheel seemed to never stop spinning. Numbers, colors, combinations, odd or even, zero and double zero, it was, except for craps, the fastest game in town.

Once more Lenny cashed three thousand to the approval of another nameless pit boss. Once again history repeated itself. If the Weasel played black for six spins, six times the little silver ball would settle on a red number. In an effort to simply win a spin, he divided half his remaining chips, splitting them evenly between the red and the black. There was no surprise or shock in his face when the wheel stopped at double zero and the croupier gathered in his remaining chips. He left the table.

When a gambler begins to expect to lose, he will. He may or may not acknowledge the existence of luck, but he can feel when he is going to lose. Like an addict going cold turkey, Lenny was feeling the pain of not winning and unlike the pain of dying, it ran far deeper into the Weasel's soul.

So it was for the rest of the evening. At the craps table, he would bet, knowing there was no chance of winning. He would second guess himself, correct his bets and all to no avail. By midnight, he had lost all his money, except for fifty dollars. In desperation he pumped these final funds into the slot machines. They were no kinder.

Broke and broken, he returned to his room to die. So he was a loser after all, he thought, and fell into a sad and troubled sleep.

He dreamt of Sonya, his wife. They had been the oddest of couples. She, sophisticated, beautiful and charming, he streetwise, plain and crude. She was the best thing there had ever been in his life. She tolerated all his vices and loved him in spite of himself. He was good to her and even let her talk him into taking dancing lessons, which, much to his surprise, he'd enjoyed. He hadn't danced in three years. He hadn't been happy in three years. He hadn't been alive in three years.

The next morning Lenny awoke, almost shocked that he was still living. He felt very weak and very ill. He could barely answer the door when room service brought up his complimentary breakfast and paper. Then it happened. It was a tingling, a feeling he had known before.

Suddenly he remembered. He scanned the paper till he saw what he wanted. He dug through his wallet till he found what he sought. He checked and double checked the paper and then did the same to his lottery ticket. Just like that, he had won. More money than he had ever dreamed of, but he felt no exhilaration, no joy. He still felt like a loser and could not imagine why. Not until he noticed the faint music drifting up the corridors from the ballroom two floors below.

The waltzes, tangos and fox-trots echoed through Lenny's room like bullets ricocheting off steel. He wiped the tears he had held for three years and doubled over in a lifetime's worth of pain. He could see Sonya, so much lovelier than the mountain of money he had won. He could see her clearly. She was as real as Atlantic City was imagination.

It was not here that he had lost all that he ever had, it was not here that he had made the bad bet. It was when she had died alone, with no one's hand to hold. When she had passed to an eternal sleep with strangers' faces looking on and all because he had bet she could last that extra week while he played cards. He had sacrificed his love for his passion and all the black chips in the world could not ease the sorrow and the guilt.

A smile came to his lips when all the tears had passed. A smile of understanding and enlightenment. He had not been a loser, Lenny the Weasel had known love.

That night in Atlantic City, a lady in a six-year-old summer dress, who had hocked her wedding ring to play the slots for one more day, hit the super slot for one million dollars. The hotel gave her a free room and another week to lose back as much as possible. A vacuum salesman from New Rochelle made eighteen straight passes at the craps table and set a casino record. The pit boss was thrilled that the man only bet $5 a roll and even more thrilled that the other players were betting against him. An Arab prince with sixteen wives made the largest single bet ever recorded in Atlantic City at the baccarat table, and you could hear the manager's sigh of relief when he lost.

All this happened, but Lenny the Weasel was unaware and unseeing. The player had busted. Lenny the Weasel had drawn his final card.