CASINO, Mary Collins [top ten books to read txt] 📗

high school, she went to work as a receptionist in an attorney’s office, and worked at McDonald’s at night. When her younger sister Annie graduated high school, she quit both jobs and moved out, vowing to never return to her father’s house. She was twenty-five years old when she took the job at Freddie’s Pizza House. She planned to work there until something better came along and yet here she was five years later, still working for Freddie. At least she’d managed to save sixty thousand dollars while working there. She only paid two hundred dollars a month for her share of the rent on the apartment, and the utilities were included. She learned early in life that she could survive on very little. Most of the money she made in tips went into her savings account. She hardly ever bought clothes and when she did she would get them on sale or either at the Goodwill store.
JoAnne’s dream was to write a novel and become a famous author. She’d finished the novel over a year ago, but wasn’t having any luck getting it published. She’d sent out queries to ten different publishers and had already gotten back six letters of rejection, but she wasn’t giving up, she knew that someday her writing would be accepted.
JoAnne was feeling the aftershock when she got back to Freddie’s Pizza House at one o’clock that morning, knowing Marty would be closing. There were three servers working the night shift and JoAnne knew that it wouldn’t take them long to clean things up.
“Is something wrong?” Marty knew that JoAnne was usually home in bed at this time of morning.
“No…nothing is wrong.” She calmly took the check out of her purse. “I just wanted to show you this.”
Looking at the check, Marty had to sit down, one hundred thousand dollars and half of it hers. “I can quit this job…right now.”
“No, we can’t leave the place in a mess. Come on, I’ll help you clean up.” If not for JoAnne, Marty would have walked out of the place right at that moment.
“Alright, I’ll do it for you.” With the other servers help, they had the restaurant clean and orderly within thirty minutes.
Marty and JoAnne got little sleep, thinking of their winnings, and Next morning wasted no time getting to the bank. After giving Marty her share of the money, JoAnne deposited what was left into her savings account. They went back to the apartment and took the phone off the hook; knowing Freddie would be calling to see why JoAnne wasn’t at work. She didn’t care; he’d always treated her badly, now she would get even with him. She took a quick shower and went back to bed. Hearing pounding on the door, she abruptly jumped out of bed and threw on her robe. Looking at the clock, she saw it was nearly noon.
“Who the hell is that?” Marty yelled from her room.
Stumbling to open the door, JoAnne didn’t expect Freddie to be standing there. He had a menacing look on his face, one that she’d seen many times before, but this time it didn‘t scare her as it had in the past.
“You’re fired!” he yelled at her.
“I’ve already quit.” She slammed the door in his face, and it felt good. She’d often dreamed of doing it, but never before could afford to.
With her savings and the Casino winnings, she could open her own pizza restaurant if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to, she’d use her part of the money to promote her dream of becoming a famous author.


CHAPTER THREE

JoAnne smiled as she thought about how mad Freddie must be. She was still so excited she couldn’t think of anything but her winnings. She called her youngest sister as she usually did once or twice a week, just to check on her and her mother.
“I got accepted to the university,” her younger sister told her, “I will start in the fall. I’ve saved enough money for my first year’s tuition, and have applied for a student loan and a Pell Grant.”
At twenty-two years old, Annie took night classes at the local community college while working full time in a doctor’s office as a secretary. She now wanted to follow her sister Shelia’s example and stop working to attend college full time. Knowing her sister would do well, just as her other siblings had, JoAnne supported Annie’s decision. Her oldest brother Jimmy graduated college five years earlier with a veterinarian degree, and her younger brother Bobby was in his last year of law school. JoAnne was proud of all of them. They’d survived their childhood and turned out well-rounded, which was surprising, considering the way their father stayed drunk.
JoAnne never returned home, but kept in touch with her mother. In their last phone conversation, she found out her father had suffered a light heart attack and they’d discovered a spot on his lungs. They made an appointment to have some more x-rays and test run, and the doctors warned him to quit drinking and smoking, yet he was drinking even more and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. JoAnne tried to get her mother to leave him, but she never would. After the way he treated her and her children all those years, she still loved him.
Beginning to have hunger pains, JoAnne needed something to eat.
“Get up Marty and let’s go get some lunch. I’m starved.”
They usually ate at McDonalds or Pizza Hut, but being they’d won big at the casino, they decided to go somewhere else. Driving along the same old streets and seeing the same old scenery, Marty said, “Let’s go to Nashville.”
“Are you crazy? We can’t go that far, we didn’t bring a change of clothes.”
“We can buy some clothes.” JoAnne wasn’t as spontaneous as Marty.
“We can’t up and leave, we don’t anyone in Nashville.”
“I didn’t know anyone when I drove twelve hundred miles to come here and look how things turned out for me. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Ok, you’re right. I keep forgetting that we have money now.We can go anywhere we want to.” She’d never gone that far. Nashville Tennessee would be a great place for a vacation. Turning the car around, she headed east on the interstate highway toward Nashville.
Driving all day, only stopping to eat or use the bathroom and get gas, they arrived in Nashville Tennessee early the next morning and got off the first exit showing a Holiday Inn sign, both wanting to take a shower and get some sleep.
Marty woke up at nine o’clock the next morning, went down to the lobby, picked up two cups of coffee and returned to the room.
“Wake up Sleeping Beauty,” she said to JoAnne, “I’m starving, let’s go get some breakfast.”
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming to Nashville,” JoAnne said, “Now what do we do?”
“Why don’t we stay for a while, if we don’t like it, we can move on. I don’t want to go back to Shreveport.”
“We can talk about it over breakfast.” Rubbing sleep from her eyes, JoAnne threw her legs over the side of the bed in an attempt to get up.
During the fifteen-minute wait at Shoney’s JoAnne called her voice mail, from the pay phone, to check her messages.
“Hello Miss Bray, this is Stanley Price with Honeycutt Publishing House. I’ve read your manuscript and would like to publish your book. Call me at 1-800- PUBLISH to discuss details if you are still interested.”
She didn’t listen to the rest of her messages, instead went running back to where Marty waited to be seated.
“I’ve got to go home; they’ve accepted my book!” She was more excited than when she’d hit the slot machine. This is the break she’d waited for since deciding to publish her stories, she couldn’t pass it up. There were notebooks filled with her writings, which were still in her mother’s old house, in a box in the attic hidden under all the other stuff she’d kept up there. Later she’d written more short stories and a few magazine articles, but had never gotten any of them published. It was hard to believe this was happening; her latest novel would soon be in print. She had to call the publisher back.
“Why do you have to go home? You can have your sister pick up your computer and all your files and ship them to you. We can stay here, rent a condo, I can get a job and you can write.” Marty sounded desperate.
“Dream on, I can’t just write, I have to work, at least until my books start selling.”
“It’s not like you need the money, you have plenty of it now.”
“I don’t feel comfortable spending it.” Being raised as she had, JoAnne had security issues, and knew Marty didn’t understand.
Looking up, JoAnne noticed a tall, good-looking man winding his way through the crowded restaurant toward their table. Maybe he thought he knew them.
“Excuse me, my name is Simon Vance. I’m a movie producer, and am looking for girls in their twenties or early thirties to be extras in a movie we are shooting in Dickson, Tennessee. It’s about a family of moon shiners living in the hills of Tennessee and running moonshine to various parts of the country. We need about twenty-five girls. You two would fit the part perfectly. Would you be interested?”
“Yes!” Marty squealed, before even giving it any thought.
“Wait a minute,” JoAnne said, “I don’t know.” She was thinking it sounded a bit farfetched.
“We will pay you a thousand dollars a week and put you up in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, meals included,” the man said.
JoAnne was reluctant, but with some coaxing from Marty she finally said, “OK, but when this is over, we go back home.”
Marty and JoAnne joined the other girls, the next morning at nine o’clock, at the Hyatt Regency, where they were given a script, before going to the set. The girls didn’t have much to say, just had to look good. They were furnished wardrobe, which they could keep after the shoot …if they wanted to. Not all of the girls would be picked, they only needed twenty-five and there were about seventy-five to try out. JoAnne and Marty were two of the twenty-five picked.
They were on the set for nine hours the first day and couldn’t wait to get to their suite and get into the Jacuzzi. JoAnne had never stayed in a hotel at all except for one night when she first moved to the city, and she and Marty chose to share a room.
The girls celebrated, ordering t-bone steaks and Bananas Foster from room service, along with champagne spritzers, all paid for by the producers.
“This is the life,” Marty said, lying down on one of the big comfortable beds. Staying awake until 3:00 in the morning, they talked about how much fun this trip turned out to be.
“Aren’t you glad I talked you into it?” Marty asked JoAnne.
“Yes I guess I am.” She agreed it was more fun than working at Freddie’s.
JoAnne called the publisher back the next day agreeing to the terms of the contract and arranging to do the