The Life of Jorge Fuertes

Jorge always had a melancholy smile.

Whenever he smiled or even laughed, his smile always ended with a peculiar melancholy twitch in the corners of his mouth that sent the message that he was thinking that, sure, we can laugh now, if we want to, but things aren’t really that great and they’re going to get worse… Believe me, I know. His smile was not as sad as it was skeptical. Something inside of him kept him from ever really enjoying the moment ever again. Something had anchored him. It smothered his joy. And I could see all of that in his smile.

He was about 5’ 8” tall and weighed about 165 lbs.
His skin was olive and his thinning in front, brown hair had turned grey around his ears, temples, and the sides of his head. He had bags under his eyes and age spots on his hands. He also had a paunch belly. He wasn’t a handsome man by any means. His body betrayed his real age; he looked older than he really was.

I first met Jorge when he started working for us. I was a floorman and he was a blackjack dealer. His job was to deal the game and my job was to watch him. He was very pleasant and respectful in his dealings with all the customers and staff, and that made me like him right away. He made my job easier because I hardly ever had to settle any beefs on his game.

Besides his high professionalism, at that time, I was learning Spanish and was very curious about his accent because Jorge spoke with an unusual Spanish accent and his English was really good. I asked him a lot of questions about Spanish grammar and he was always kind enough to answer them. I found out from him that he was from Argentina and had lived in the USA for the last 30 odd years. He took a liking to me right away too. I guess it was because of my appreciation of his hard work and my curiosity about his language. Our friendship was forming nicely.

Jorge was a very steady and consistent dealer, even though he wasn’t very lucky. His game won a little more than it lost, so we were happy to keep him on because he was so darn good with the customers. These particular qualities happen to make for good craps dealers, too. We asked Jorge if he was interested in learning the game and he surprised us by reluctantly agreeing. We started training him on the game right away. At first, he was like a fish out of water. He had a terrible time learning the game and most of the management wondered if he really had what it took to be a craps dealer. I wasn’t involved in his actual training but I did have time to watch his training process. I figured out that he didn’t understand the where-hows and why-fors of the game. He didn’t understand exactly how the many combinations of payoffs on the game were based and that was what confused him. So on one break, while my work wasn’t so demanding, I took him aside and explained the natural probabilities of two six-sided dice to him. He understood them right away and the light bulb turned on. After the break, he walked back onto the game and found out that he actually could deal it. From then on, whenever he had complex questions about the game, he made sure to ask me if he didn’t get the answers from his trainers. Our friendship got stronger.

Jorge’s ability to deal craps never got super strong because he never developed any real speed. This wasn’t because he couldn’t figure out the math; in fact, he always was able to accurately mentally calculate the correct payoffs. It was more because of his age. He was simply too old and his body too broken to be humping over a craps table at great speed for any length of time. He would often walk away sweating to go on his twenty minute break after an hour’s work. I felt sorry for the guy a lot of times and never pressured him to go as fast as the younger dealers were going. He was good enough for the customers and that was darn sure good enough for me.

After about a year and a half, I had earned my promotion to shift manager and we were looking for someone to replace me. We asked Jorge if he wanted a floorman’s job. He was again reluctant. We told him that we knew that he could do the job and had a lot of faith in him, but he was still hesitant. He finally told me that he didn’t want to have to work for three or four hours at a time without any breaks. He wanted his breaks and his easy job because he could go smoke his cigarettes and relax. He just wasn’t interested in excelling. He wanted things to go easy. When he finally accepted the job, and our scheduling woes vanished, he took a late swing shift and accepted all the odd hours because business wasn’t as strong during those hours and he could get more breaks. He worked with me a lot and I let him have his smoke breaks whenever he asked. I didn’t mind at all, because we worked out a deal between us that went like whenever the other guy wanted a break, he got it as long as the work got done first. Jorge and I worked together well and our friendship grew stronger.

One day, during a lull in play, I was watching my games and Jorge was watching his. He called me over to his side of the pit because he wanted to tell me something. Jorge told me something about his family. It was the first time in four or five years working together that he told me anything about his personal life and his family. We had been winning all night and we were in very good moods. We were laughing and scratching. He told me why he liked me so much.

He said, “Patrick, do you know why I like you so much? Do you know why we are such good friends?”

I smilingly said, “No, Jorge. Why?” I was thinking that he would say because I was such a cool boss or something conceited like that.

He said, “I like you because of your name.”

I said nothing.

He said, “Your name is my favorite name of them all. I like the name so much I named my daughter ‘Patricia.’ She lives here in the USA.”

I replied in my usual, “Well, I know for a fact that my name is the best of them all. And Patricia is just as good as Patrick. You did well in naming her so.”

He laughed and said, “You’re right. It is.”

I laughed too and didn’t give our conversation another thought until two years later.

Over those next two odd years, Jorge’s health got worse. His patience got shorter and so did his breathing. He was also having personal trouble with his girlfriend who was about fifteen years younger than him. They had been going out together for about three years and things weren’t working out. I often saw him looking off into space when he should have been watching the blackjack games. This concerned me because I’ve learned a few things and one of the things I’ve learned is exactly what people are thinking when they just look off into space. It means that they want to be somewhere else. They want to be anywhere but where they are. It is like when someone is sitting down and wiggling and jiggling their foot. It’s because they have grown impatient and they are planning and plotting new courses. I could see that in Jorge’s eyes and I knew that our time together was growing short. By that time, Jorge and I had worked together about six years and I just thought that he was ready to move on to a different job. I had no idea.

It was the Christmas of 2000 that Jorge took his three week vacation. We let him have it because he had planned it a full year prior. He was planning to visit his family in Argentina and wanted all the extra time to travel around his country and relax. He got more and more anxious right before his vacation. He didn’t laugh or smile. He just did his job in a quick manner and left immediately after work. I thought he was busy planning and making preparations for his big journey so I didn’t pay too much attention to his behavior.

He gave me a Christmas present that year. It was the last thing he did before got off work to start his vacation. It was his last action before leaving us to go to Argentina. His present to me was a money clip. He told me that he really wanted me to have it because he knew that I would need it and be able to use it. I smiled and thanked him and told him to have a great holiday with his family. He said nothing. He just turned on his heel and walked out the doors. That was the last time I ever saw him.

Three weeks later, we were expecting Jorge to return to work. He never arrived. We didn’t have any idea what had happened to him. We asked around if anybody had seen or heard from him, or if he had actually found another better job, but nobody had any idea where he had gone. It bothered us for a little while that he had left us without telling us where he was going, but that kind of behavior is normal in the casino industry. In fact, it is expected and tolerated because that’s just the nature of the business. Most people move from one casino to another without prior notice because of money issues. We all know that and we make do with what we have.

We didn’t hear anything about what happened to Jorge until the police arrived in the second week of February. It seemed that they were just as concerned about him as we were but for a lot of very different reasons. The police told us that Jorge’s landlord had gone into his apartment because his rent hadn’t been paid. The landlord found Jorge’s body on the floor of his living room and had immediately called the police.

The police did their investigation and immediately came to us. The police told us that Jorge had committed suicide by placing a .22 pistol to his right temple and pulling the trigger. When they had found his body, there was no blood. His body was in an only partially decomposed state and had been laying there in his living room without any heat for about four weeks. It had been pretty well preserved. We also learned from the police that Jorge had just broken up with his girlfriend and had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was going to die anyway.

But that’s not the reason that the police came to us. The reason was that they had a lot of questions because they couldn’t figure out who his next of kin was. They didn’t know if he had any family or not. They asked us if we knew, and the funny thing was, none of us knew if he had any family. They wanted to know whom they could place a call. They had to call someone to inform them and get them to collect all of his personal belongings and close the case. And they had no idea who to call.

And after six or seven years working with us, we didn’t know either!

They tried his estranged girlfriend, but, as it turns out, Jorge never told her anything about his family, the same as he never told anything to us. He was very secretive about his family with everyone. The only thing his girlfriend said when she heard that he was dead was, “Did he leave me any money?”

And that’s why I write Jorge’s story. Patricia lived on the East Coast and flew to Vegas to finish the paperwork. I never met her. Case closed.

As we later speculated, we figured that Jorge had been badly burned by his life’s experiences with his family and friends and, although he may not have known it, he was somehow letting his smile show that he knew of and had experienced enough of life’s unfairness and brutality to warrant never really enjoying the moment ever again. I didn’t understand that until many years later. He was alone and had no family and we never knew that. He chose his path of solitude and put up a brilliant façade that fooled most of everybody. We didn’t know about his pain and he never told us. He didn't want us to know. The only thing that betrayed him was his smile.

I still remember Jorge as a friend and a good man. His suicide does not bother me as much as the other suicides I’ve seen. I still am sad when I think of it, but instead of having the feelings of frustration I have with the others, with his, I also have a sense of relief.