MONTE CARLO

 

Monte Carlo

When you walk into the Casino at Monte Carlo, there is a golden statue to rub for good luck. There is also a swollen table minimum to walk beyond that luxury lobby point and that's why only the rich people are allowed to pass through.

“Proper attire” is required. Read: Americans better brush up on becoming dress. No, you can't wear shorts. Or flip-flops, sports shoes, logo T-shirts, and for goodness sake, leave the ballcap for the ballpark. It's not only Americans who can't dress nicely anymore, but they are the ones most discussed with disgust.

Citizens of Monaco are banned from the casino. They are banned from gambling due to moral reasons. The Princely family did not want Monegasque citizens to gamble away their money and since Monaco is an independent state, gambling laws do not have to conform to those in France.

Outside the casino, conspicuously parked, are the most expensive and gorgeous cars in the world. Cars you've never seen or heard of, cars you've dreamed of, cars you wouldn't believe exist. Exquisite examples of the coolest cars. Vintage and brand new lined in a row along the front curb. A race car from the Grand Prix always takes a spot. You're bound to hear that car roar around the sharp corner coming from behind the right side of the Casino as it ascends the hilltop where the casino is perched. Even a Rolls Royce would have a challenge to be parked out front in that row of about a dozen stunner cars. It would have to be a very special Rolls. Can you imagine a Rolls Royce as mediocre? Occasionally, a celebrity gets to park an ordinary car among the extraordinary, since the presence of fame outflanks every vehicle.

Fancy outfitted valets take all the other cars and park them out of sight or underground so the famous or fabulous out front can be seen after being heard. It's a spectacle. Just sitting on a bench in the center park square and watching the flow from the casino is a worthwhile show. And it's free.

Not much is free in Monte Carlo. The atmosphere all around the small country is crisp and expensive. Smells like money. Fancy everything. The smallest details in public spaces are spruced up in refined ways to be better, more comfortable, surprising, and luxurious. The wrought iron curly-cues on benches, the fancy chandelier streetlights, the expensive art and architecture, statues worthy of museums, and gardens so lush and lushly scented that they take your breath away. It's magical, Monte Carlo. The Principality is literally breathtaking everywhere you look, beyond exquisite approaching the harbor from the Mediterranean, but outside of the Palace and surrounding area, which overlooks the famed Jacque Cousteau observatory, it's the Casino that holds the mystique of opulence. It's the Casino that hoovers in the world's riches and supports the small country. There are no property, personal, or income taxes in Monaco.

I know about that advancing roar from a race car, because I came to the Casino in a race car one day. Lucky to be the guest of someone with money to burn, we were directed to wait while they moved a “lesser” car away and we parked third from the left out front. My mouth dropped open at the sight of Casino Square. It did look just like in the movies, but the elegance and colors and crowds of people pop more vividly in person, in a way that titillated all my senses to tilt off meter. I sat still and looked in awe while my host stepped out to throngs of admirers and a bunch formed to take pictures. Fame is funny. People want to be near it, as if by association, it makes them more noteworthy. I'd been working with a film crew, casting, we'd just finished a scene at the Monaco Grand Prix, and one of the starring actors “borrowed” this car and borrowed me, and here we were one afternoon to make a splash. The Casino counted on his cash.

I stepped out to walk out of frame from the camera hounds and after a few minutes, we finally broke free and went inside. Proof of identity is required to check citizenship and there is an entry fee, which was waved for us. The fawning stops inside the Casino, since there are many rich and famous people, mostly sequestered in private rooms or games, but still, there's a difference between public and private and the surroundings demand privacy, like most casinos. After that, it's just an ordinary, albeit opulent Casino, brilliantly hued, laden with gold, everywhere. Gold walls, gold statues, gold accents, gold, gold, gold. A treasure chest of possibility. It's quiet compared to most casinos. It's not loaded with noisy slot machines. Slots aren't for high rollers. This is Baccarat and Blackjack. This is James Bond style betting. Roulette, Poker, private games, secrets. This is “shaken, not stirred” gambling, millions of Euros moving around every minute of every day. This is Big Money.

I don't know anything about Baccarat, so I watched and learned. My escort knew what he was doing. He won. I won at Roulette, but not much, and decided to keep the chip as souvenir rather than cash it in. Clever that they emboss “Monte Carlo” on chips that are more like coins. Craps was exciting and fast, expensive and elegant. Everyone around the table, dressed to the nines. I dared one field bet and then won bigger on a hard 8 bet, but mostly watched the fast action and badinage between the more astute gamblers. I recognized two celebrities who were the most fun at the table, regaling all the others with their stories and jokes. Our table had the noise, the buzz, the loud laughter that bubbles and warms inside big wins.

I watched a famous singer across the floor win a big hand at Black Jack and she sang a tune out loud right there and to glorious applause from the floor when she finished. Then she stood up and took a big bow with a flair that only the famous and fabulous get away with. More applause and laughter echoed through the celebrated gaming house. Moments like that broke up the din of spins and clanging chips and secret hand movement signals across tables. Monte Carlo Casino, a distinctly different gaming house, a den of affluent pleasure and bonhomie.

There is a Buzz in there. A bombinating vacuum. The sights and sounds of wealth vibrate differently. It's perceptible. It may be the world's premier casino. Although there's bigger, I don't think there's prettier. Macau, San Juan, Las Vegas, even Oklahoma have bigger and opulent gaming places, but Monte Carlo comes with fantasy and history, legend and aura.

After a couple hours, we left to walk around, get a bite to eat and mill through the throngs of tourists from all over the world. We were stopped a lot. People wanted pictures and there were stares, pointing fingers, and not so hushed whispers wherever we went. My friend is quite used to this, but it's a spectacle that felt foreign to me. He would laugh and after a nice nod or two to unafraid fans, would whisk me away by the arm onward to the next place. At one point, we ducked into a darkened gambling place that serves as a spot for regular people to place bets. It looked more like a video arcade from the 1980s, but there was real gambling plus cooled air and a pause for privacy while we played around for fifteen minutes. I played Roulette and won. It felt like luck.

The hotel across the square is equally luxurious, also world famous. The food and service, impeccable and unequaled. We stopped in for an indulgent late lunch. Very French, always with astonishing extras, little touches of elegant. The shops nearby are world class. We window shopped around the sumptuous stores, then at Graff's jewelers on the corner, the world's most renowned jeweler, then went inside because I had to try on a significant natural yellow diamond and see it up close. Short the 3.7 million Euros to purchase it, I settled for a fancy ice cream cone from next door, with sprinkles. That cone cost $17. It is Monte Carlo, after all.

Just Another Lori Story

THE GIRL ON THE HILL

 

The Girl on the Hill

There's this frozen image for me of the girl on the hill. I see her each week. I think it's usually on Wednesdays when she is there. She climbs the long cement staircase from the back entrance of the church and turns around after the top step to face away from me. She looks beyond the house of prayer playground, across the street to the large white building with big blooming trees behind it.

She's sensing, staring at something. Immobilized. Her reverie is prolonged and painful to witness. The girl looks and stays, sobbing from swollen red eyes, shoulders shaking, convulsively crying, her eyes, big round bulging balls of bloated swollen-shut grief, seemingly an endless well with tears overflowing that plop past her legs to the pavement.

She cries and cries and stays and stares.

I see a soul in pain. Deep saturated unadulterated pain. The girl on the hill shakes, a whole-body shaking, a visceral response to an unknown catastrophe, a vibrational outcome to overgrown grief.

The weight of her heartbreak grips me in a profound clench. I cannot look away and I want so much to hold her, to tell her that whatever it is will not be permanent, that she will go on in life to live and laugh and love again.

Somebody hurt her. Hurt her hard. She looked like a normal nice person who didn't deserve whatever had happened to her, whatever someone did to her. I could tell. It was the way she carried herself – the curves of her body – how they heaved when she wept in a potent but dignified personal way. It's difficult to explain. She probably wanted to scream out, to fall down those steps, or prostrate herself permanently so that her pain could collapse into the concrete and be part of the pavement on top of the hill. Instead, it wracked her body and soul and she stood alone against the onslaught of Spirit demolition, brutally broken, but still resilient. It's why I watched every week for her, to witness the gutsy girl, who despite devastation, came to this spot and did the same thing and I wondered what I might be able to eventually do for her.

I imagined every premise. A lost love, a devastating setback, a medical anomaly that could not be helped, a religious reason for being there in church, any missed opportunity, death, debt, divorce ... something had clearly broken this girl in unspeakable structure and it touched me in ways I cannot articulate.

When she finally turns around to walk to her car, she limps a little bit. She's injured. Her face registers pain and profound grief. Wailing each week after an appointment wasn't helping at all. Leaving with eyes puffed closed only risked her swollen life to drive. She hitches slowly towards a Honda Accord. The girl on the hill is mortally wounded, soulfully and physically. I make up stories about her in my mind, imagining various scenarios about what could possibly have come about to undo this poor girl. What does she do every week inside the church? Who does she see that makes her weep?

Who or what is over in the distant white building that she stands and stares at? It makes her sob harder. The vision of her moves me so. I cannot look away even as I cannot bear the sight of her intense sadness either.

The gloominess is ugly and anguished, especially the crimson eyes where her soul is leaking from. Her heart is too wide open, practically visible on her left shoulder as it edges out of her heaving chest, and the force of combustion squeezes her swollen face still tighter together. With one last look, the girl over yonder on the hill turns to get into her car and I briefly see them better, those eyes, ruddy and compressed closely shut from the exhaustion of her.

Her weekly session thus ends in palpable pain, with her right hand holding a clutched wad of wet facial tissues punctuating her heavy hurt; with glimpses still on the horizon in the near distance, looking at a building to focus on nothing knowable.

What was she looking at over there? What did she see? What was she imagining? What did she do inside that church every Wednesday? Where did she go? What does she know? I think she knows too much about something or someone and it is destroying her.

I used to simply observe from afar and carry on with whatever I was doing. When I noticed the same girl with the same sadness every week, I stopped and watched and after awhile I started to wait for her, wondering why the girl on the hill did this every time and what did it mean and why was she wounded?

I knew she'd be there. It was clockwork. A timed impairment moment when her existence hurt her so badly that she could not bear to simply get in her car and carry on, drive away into her future.

It was a ritual. An odd ritual, but a ritual nonetheless. She looked across to a building. Frozen in position, pleading with Angels to help her, was what I imagined. Who was she thinking about? Why did she come to this church every Wednesday, walk down those steps, disappear for an hour and come out crying?

What the hell happened to her. Who was the girl on the hill and what was her soul expanding to accept?

There's a girl on the hill. I see her. I see her trying to squeeze shut against whatever pain every Wednesday brings. I stop and look. I watch. I wait. I wonder. What did it mean?

The girl's grief grabbed me so hard, it wouldn't let go. It sometimes choked the happy out of me, not only on Wednesdays, but on other days when I'd remember Wednesday. She was me.

One Wednesday, a massive flock of small black birds flew into that big tree behind that white building that the girl on the hill always stopped and stared at. The birds covered the big ball of orange leaves on the rounded tree and rested. It was a Holy sight to see, black covering orange, the birds blocking the leaves. That's the last day that I ever saw the girl on the hill.

She came out while the birds were still sitting there and something about her that day told me that I would never see her again. She stood for a prolonged time, until the tree emptied itself of the birds and stood brilliant hued again.

I think about her all of the time. It's been more than a decade and most Wednesdays, I still watch out the window and look to see if she might be there. It's become a habit. Especially when the ball of fire tree turns orange and then weeps its leaves off one by one over autumn weeks, I remember the girl on the hill and I pray for her.

After I stopped seeing her there, I suffered. My grief, not explainable. I didn't know her, but I wanted to. I didn't know her, but felt like I did. Watching her every week, every Wednesday, I knew she'd been through something barely survivable. Either she made it through or she didn't. I'd never know what happened and I never saw her again. Not on Wednesday or any other day. But I never forgot her either.

The girl on the hill.

Another Lori Story