The casino coffee was technically free, but everyone knew you paid for it one way or another.
I sat in the corner beside the blinking VLT machines, holding a styrofoam cup that tasted like burnt dirt and watching an old hockey game on the mounted TV above the bar. The carpet smelled like cigarettes from 1997, even though nobody smoked inside anymore. It was quiet except for the endless ding-ding-ding of slot machines and the occasional old guy yelling at horse racing results.
That’s when Mark Todd showed up.
Nobody knew where he came from. One minute the chair beside me was empty, the next there he was in a leather jacket with hospital bracelets still hanging off his wrist.
“You know who shoulda had more respect?” he asked immediately.
I shrugged. “Who?”
“Doug Gilmour.”
Then he launched into a twenty-minute speech about the Leafs in the nineties like he was delivering a State of the Union address. Every few sentences he’d sip my coffee without asking and point dramatically at the TV.
“They don’t make players like Gilmour anymore,” he said. “Guys now got perfect teeth and TikTok accounts.”
I noticed he kept glancing toward the casino entrance every couple seconds. Nervous. Sweaty. Like a raccoon hiding near a garbage bin.
Finally I asked, “You alright, man?”
Mark leaned closer.
“I escaped the hospital.”
He said it casually. Like telling somebody he’d forgotten milk at the grocery store.
Before I could answer, two security guards stormed through the casino doors followed by a pair of police officers. One security guard pointed directly at Mark.
“There he is.”
Mark stood up so fast he knocked over the coffee.
“You’ll never understand the truth about Doug Gilmour!” he yelled at nobody in particular.
The entire casino froze. Even the slot machines somehow sounded quieter.
One cop grabbed Mark gently by the arm while the other sighed like this happened every Tuesday.
“Mark,” the officer said, “you can’t keep leaving the hospital and hiding in casinos.”
Mark kept ranting while they walked him away.
“Doug Gilmour played with HEART! HEART!”
The security guards followed behind like exhausted babysitters.
Then one of the officers turned toward me.
“You his friend?”
I shook my head immediately.
The officer pointed toward the exit. “Then do yourself a favor and get the heck outta here.”
So I left the casino carrying the smell of stale coffee on my jacket while inside, somewhere behind me, Mark Todd was still yelling about the Toronto Maple Leafs. :
