Continuing our investment journey

The passage that I wrote this morning for my fake novel BRYAN THE TYGER is a continuation of yesterday's adventure in money-spending. Don't knock it till you've tried it! (I mean don't knock money-spending... I don't care if you knock today's episode: I'd knock it too, if I hadn't penned it.)

[I got tired of graffiti-ing tygers onto junk ads, so, for the next few days, the obligatory images that accompany these announcements will be just lazy attempts at hand-drawing copies of ad photos with felt tip marker.]

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Thirty

So, like I said yesterday before I got too sleepy to continue, the next casino that we visit is The Venetian, in Macau. I tip our chauffeur heavily, as usual, and salute:

“Thanks for helping us type up and submit that review,” I shout as the limousine screeches away; “we really appreciate it!”

Myala shakes her Panther-head and remarks: “I don’t envy him having to drive all the way back to Detroit.”

By the time we approach the enormous glass doors of the entryway, we have only 200 caesars in our cat-purse. And, once inside, upon glancing around, we immediately notice that all of the best machines are broken.

“Pardon, madame,” I address a French maid who is dusting one of the broken machines; “may I ask you a question?”

Turning around, the maid sees that I am a Burning Tyger, therefore she screams and runs away.

I roll my eyes and go approach an android butler. “Excuse me, Devlin,” I say, lightly tapping the robot on his shoulder with my mighty forepaw, “could you tell me why every single machine that I would like to play here has an ‘Out of Service’ sign taped over its screen?”

Turning around, the robo-butler screams and flees.

So Myala and I settle for playing poker. “How dull,” I mutter as we take our seats at the round table. – Within an hour we have won collectively more than 5,000 caesars; so we gather up our winnings and try to leave.

The reason I say that we “try to leave” is that we’re not freely allowed to exit the establishment: At the glass double-doors, we are met by that same posse of gamblers who we just bested and completely drained of cash. (They even wagered their farm, so now we technically own a farm somewhere — look: here’s the official deed.)

“Just where do you two think you’re going?” sez their stupid gang’s leader.

“To Nevada,” I say, “which is supposedly home to more than three hundred casinos. You see, we’re on a gambling spree. We’ve been to places in Iowa and Detroit, and then we came here, because we heard it was good (but it sux cuz all its slots are on the fritz); and now we’re planning on continuing until this Moneymaking Mission begins to bore us. I was worried that we’d need to quit shortly after joining your card game, since Myala and I both find poker tedious; but it was fun because we kept winning and winning and winning. I’m actually tired of winning now, and I won’t mind losing a bit of money at the next place, if Fate so decrees. But, I repeat, I’m a little annoyed that most of your best machines are out-of-order. If you had kept up with the proper maintenance of these devices, then you’d have never lost a cent to us, for, like I just got done explaining, the last thing I want to do is outsmart a crew of dishonest cheating gangsters who all stink. But sometimes the Good LORD throws you a curveball; and I swing at everything; and I always knock it out of the park — by which I mean the ball that I just metaphorically hit: I got a grand slam; because, for me, the bases are always loaded. (I make my own luck.) Now if you’ll just allow me and my muse here to pass on thru, we’ll be out of your hair.”

I nudge my Tyger-head between the gang-leader and his biggest thug who’s standing next to him (they’re all dressed like old-west cowboys), and I slink past, and Myala tries to do the same, but they close in on her and won’t let her thru; so she mauls them.

Then we flag down another limo and instruct the driver to take us to Nevada. (He helps us leave a scathing review of the place in Macau.)

§

In Nevada, we win big. We visit all three hundred and thirty-three casinos. (That’s how many exist there, during our adventure — if you’re reading this account in the future, then maybe there are less casinos for you, because of the plague shutdowns, and because Myala and I left a majority of them bankrupt.) We play a different game at each place, and we almost go broke every time, but our last bet always shoots us over the moon, so that we skulk off with MUCH more money than we began with. By now we have multiple hundreds of trillions of caesars.

“Where should we go next?” I ask Myala, as we exit the 333rd casino and smash thru the limo-window (we weren’t trying to be cocky trillionaires by damaging this property — we just didn’t realize that the window wasn’t rolled down, it was so clean and clear).

“Why don’t we face the Ultimate Gambling Challenge?” she sez. “I think we’re good enough.”

“You’re suggesting that we try playing the U.S.A. stock market?” I say. “You really think that’ll be any fun?”

“It will be at least as amusing as what we’ve been doing so far,” she sez, “traveling from one casino to the next in a series of limos and watching the flashy numbers seesaw.”

I cock my head. “OK,” I shrug. Then I tap on the dividing partition and tell the chauffeur to take us to Wall Street.

The driver glances back and beholds our appearance and screams and dies. (Apparently he has a heart attack or something.)

“Say,” I propose an alternate idea; “why don’t we forget the limousine ride and just sprint there on foot, for a change. It might be nice to get some fresh air.”

“You wanna jog from Nevada to New York?”

“No, I said ‘sprint’, not ‘jog’. You know: gallop!”

“Alright,” Myala counteroffers: “how about we gallop to Brooklyn, and then take a ferry-boat across the East River into Manhattan. That way, during this final stretch of our trip, we can recite Walt Whitman’s ‘Sun-Down Poem’ and feel more in touch with our forerunner, while reminding ourselves what is truly important about America.”

I smile widely: “Ma’am, you’ve got yourself a deal.” We press our mighty forepaws together as if we’re performing a human handshake.

So we leap back out of the limousine’s smashed window and race over to Brooklyn in New York City. We reach the Fulton Ferry in roughly three minutes, but this is a long time when you’re watching a continuous tracking-shot of a pair of jungle beasts galloping at full-speed in CinemaScope, so that’s why we added onto the soundtrack our favorite song by Chuck Berry during this transition.