I found myself on a site that looked cleaner than I’d expected, less like the flashing neon thing I’d imagined and more like a place that was waiting for me to arrive. I stared at the
Vavada account login screen for a long time, my fingers on the keyboard, my heart beating in a rhythm I hadn’t felt in years. I deposited fifty dollars, which was what I’d budgeted for food that week, and I told myself this was the last stupid thing I’d do, the last desperate act of a man who’d spent his life making hats for other people and was finally, finally ready to make a hat for himself.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never gambled before, not in casinos, not on cards, not on anything that wasn’t the sure bet of a hat that would cover, a brim that would trim, a thing that would be there when you needed it to cover. I found a game that looked simple, something with a classic feel, three reels and a few lines, nothing that required me to learn a new language or understand a new world. I played the first spin and lost. The second spin, lost. The third spin, lost. I watched the balance tick down from fifty to forty to thirty, and I felt the familiar weight of things not working, the same weight I’d been carrying since I made my last hat, the same weight that had settled into my chest the day I put my mother’s hat on the shelf and knew I’d never make another. I was about to close the browser, to go back to the felt, to go back to the block, when the screen did something I wasn’t expecting. The reels kept spinning, longer than they should have, and then they stopped in a configuration that made the screen go quiet, the little symbols lining up in a way that seemed almost deliberate, like the moment when the felt is shaped, when the block is fitted, when the brim is trimmed, when the hat is done and you know that it’s right, that it’s true, that it will cover.
The numbers started climbing. Thirty dollars became a hundred. A hundred became five hundred. Five hundred became two thousand. I sat in the shop, the hats on the shelf, the felt on the bench, and I watched the numbers climb like they were telling me a story I’d been waiting my whole life to hear. Two thousand became five thousand. Five thousand became ten thousand. I stopped breathing. I stopped thinking. I just watched, my whole world narrowed to the screen in front of me, the numbers that kept climbing, the impossible arithmetic of a night that was supposed to be just like every other night. Ten thousand became twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five thousand became fifty thousand. The screen stopped at fifty-two thousand, nine hundred dollars. I stared at the number for so long that my laptop screen dimmed and then went dark. I tapped the spacebar, and there it was, still there, fifty-two thousand dollars, more money than I’d ever had at one time in my entire life. I sat in the shop, the hats on the shelf, and I felt something crack open. Not the bad kind of crack, not the kind that breaks you. The kind that lets the light in, the kind that lets you breathe again after you’ve been holding your breath for so long you’d forgotten what it felt like to let go.