Page 12

It Takes Vision

Cause and effect: That’s what Padma Singh was considering.

The Ishikawa diagram Padma had studied at Harvard Business School was neatly lettered on the whiteboard that hung on the wall across from her desk.

At the right end of the horizontal line, Padma had carefully printed EFFECT—increased profit.

Along the way, she had started to fill in the CAUSES—average bet, time spent in the casino, casino capacity.

She wasn’t exactly sure she was completing the diagram properly.

That’s how it is when you graduate 892nd in a class of 900; you’re not exactly sure how to do things properly.

But when your mother is one of Forbes’ Most Powerful Women and a reputed queen of India’s organized crime, no one jots down your class ranking on the corner of your job application.

You don’t even complete an application.

You just tell your mother you want the job.

However, casino profits weren’t the problem Padma was focused on right then.

At that particular moment, Padma was trying to decide how to effect relief on her feet.

Below her desk’s glass surface it looked like two freshly baked bran muffins were popping out of their Louboutin tins.

Not to mention the blister starting on her baby toe.

Padma hadn’t intended to be on her feet that long.

Working the room on a weekday morning was different from a Saturday night.

On Saturday nights, casino patrons were partying and eager to chat with the president of operations, take a selfie, and have their comped cocktails upgraded to premium.

But Wednesday mornings at ten a.m., anyone at the tables just wanted the dealer to shoot them the cards, pay the bets, and shut up.

They weren’t looking to chitchat with the boss.

An hour earlier, Padma had taken the service elevator down to the main level and had worked her way through the kitchen, past the rows of stainless-steel equipment manned by chefs and prep cooks outfitted in crisp, white uniforms and hairnets.

She’d discovered the kitchen’s activity was the best barometer to indicate how busy the floor was.

If there was hustle and bustle at the grill, the gaming tables and machines were packed.

But on this weekday morning the busboys had been leisurely polishing coffeepots as she’d headed straight through, out the doors, around the corner, and on to the floor.

Padma always felt a bit like Sharon Stone making an entrance in Casino when she took her first steps on the bright, mosaic-patterned carpet.

Although no one had turned to watch.

And the clientele wasn’t as glamorous as in the movie—at that moment there’d been a lot of elastic waistbands and orthopedic inserts in the room.

Still, her heart had pumped faster, driven by the sounds of roulette wheels spinning, slot machines dinging, the murmur of bets being placed, and the quiet cheer of money won.

That din and the pulse of lights had melded together in a stench of hope, and desperation.

Padma had made her routine sweep past the slot machines when she smelled it.

She hadn’t been sure at first.

She’d paused and sniffed.

Circled a second time, backed up a couple steps, and sniffed again.

She’d looked around, and the only machine in operation had been manned by a wizened, white-haired lady sitting on the padded stool in front of a $1 denomination option.

Padma had approached her.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

The woman had shot her a glance and hit play.

Padma had noted her $75 credit and buck-a-spin bets. Her wrinkled, age-spotted hand with pointed red nails had pushed the button again, and her credit had risen to $85.

“Excuse me, ma’am,”

Padma had repeated. “Don’t you think you should go to the restroom?”

The woman had shaken her head. “I can’t leave now. It’s gonna hit. I can feel it.”

“But, ma’am. You must use the facilities.”

Padma had concentrated on breathing through her mouth so the pungent smell of urine wouldn’t overwhelm her.

She’d scanned the casino floor for a security guard and pondered her life choices.

If she’d taken the posting at the Mumbai tech startup her mother had arranged, she wouldn’t have been standing beside a woman who’d been peeing her pants all morning.

But Padma was tired of being pushed around by her mother and had plans of her own.

So there she had stood, sidestepping a puddle of pee.

She’d spotted security, raised her hand, and in seconds two staff had arrived at her side.

She’d left them to deal with the pee lady and hobbled to her office.

Padma was prepared to suffer for success.

Her mother told her high heels project a more professional persona, and that Padma needed all the help she could get in that department.

So for the past two months Padma had been squeezing her pudgy feet into four-inch pumps.

And it wasn’t going well.

Padma’s low center of gravity and chubby toes weren’t built for the physics of stilettos.

Now, back in her office, she longed to kick off her shoes, but she’d found out the hard way that once those dogs were freed, they’d puff up like blowfish in a shark tank, and she’d be stuck until the swelling went down.

Instead, she gingerly tucked them under her desk and tidied the surface, straightening her keyboard, water bottle, and phone.

She picked up the small pile of casino equipment brochures and tapped them on the desktop, aligning their edges.

She set them next to the small tray that held the set of chips she’d signed out from the casino bank the previous week.

She should return them, but she found the touch of their cool smoothness to be almost therapeutic.

She picked one up and rubbed it between her forefinger and thumb.

It was a bit sticky, so she spat into a tissue and wiped it clean before stacking it with the others.

It was probably dried coffee.

On her way into the casino bank, she’d brushed by some idiot employee in the hallway, and he’d left splashes of his coffee on the tiled floor.

If she’d gotten a better look at him, she would have had his manager write him up.

His carelessness had almost killed her because moments later, when she’d returned to the hall with her tray of chips, her stiletto heel had slipped in the puddle of his fucking coffee.

She could have broken her neck.

As it was, she’d had to crawl around on her hands and knees to collect the scattered chips.

She’d heard footsteps approaching from around the corner and had scrambled to rise, aware being found on all fours with her bum in the air wasn’t her best look.

She’d hurried to her meeting, where she’d spun those chips like dreidels on the boardroom table and lobbied the design team to reimagine them infused with glitter.

She spun one now, and then another, and another until they were like a row of spinning tops.

Her mother had a miniature Zen garden on her desktop.

A small tray filled with pristine sand, littered with a few semiprecious stones, and a tiny rake that she sometimes toyed with to smooth out the surface, mesmerizing an employee while they waited for her to make a decision.

What could be a more fitting desk toy for a casino boss than a tray of chips? Padma laid the chips down in a row, restacked them, and then lined them up again, reordered by denomination: one each of $25, $50, $100, $500—she left a space where the $1,000 chip would have gone—and finished the row with the $5,000 and $10,000.

It was a lot of money to casually display on her desk, and it made her a touch giddy.

She imagined they sent a subliminal message of power.

Maybe she would keep them.

At least, as long as she held on to them, she wouldn’t have to reimburse the bank for that thousand-dollar chip.

A glimpse of movement from the wall of closed-circuit monitors to her left drew her attention, and she saw Hank turn the corner and head down the corridor toward her office, his shoulders hunched.

Lately, he looked like he was carrying the whole world’s problems on his back.

Padma hurriedly straightened.

She glanced at the row of chips, slid the brochures on top of them, and began randomly tapping on her keyboard before Hank came through her door.

Even though Hank was an old and out-of-touch boob—she wouldn’t be surprised if one day he showed up for work wearing a clip-on tie—Padma appreciated that he did the heavy lifting of the day-to-day operations.

That gave her the leeway to focus on more important things—like her career path and glittery casino chips.

“Morning, boss.”

Hank crossed the room, set her tea on the desk, and took a seat across from her for their daily chat.

Padma smiled as she reached for the cup.

Admittedly she didn’t have a lot of experience with colleagues; she’d finished her MBA only a few months earlier, and this was her first real job. She wasn’t sure how to best manage Hank. She’d arrived as his superior with the intention to fire his ass for a youthful replacement she knew she could control. But then he’d started bringing her a morning tea when he’d returned from getting his own coffee. Padma had appreciated both the show of respect and not having to make the trip to the refreshment station down the hall to fetch her own, so she’d decided to keep him around a bit longer.

She held her warm paper cup between her hands and studied him for a moment. There was a crease between his eyes as though he was worried about something. Although she couldn’t be sure. Two months after meeting Hank, Padma knew as much about him as she’d read in his file that first day: exemplary employee, had started thirty-one years earlier as a dealer, then moved to pit boss, then pit supervisor and games manager. Finally landing as director of operations fifteen years ago. He oversaw every department, and the managers reported that he did it well. Impressive, considering he didn’t have an Ivy League MBA like her. At least now, with her at the helm, the Indo-USA Gaming Inc.’s casino and her mother’s investment were in properly educated hands.

Padma started, “I want to talk to you about the slot machines.”

“Do you mean Donna? Yeah. That was unfortunate. She normally outfits herself in diapers, but . . . she got caught short. It won’t happen again.”

Padma stifled a gag at the memory and carried on. “That funeral last week was for our head slot tech, and I wanted to touch base before you hire his replacement.”

“Right.”

Hank lowered his eyes, and Padma saw his forehead’s crease deepen as he looked at her puffy feet. Self-conscious, she tucked them under her chair, and as the shoe’s leather pinched her blister, she winced. “Did you know him?”

She drew Hank’s eyes back to hers.

“Who?”

“The slot tech.”

She couldn’t ignore the stab of pain as her shoe ravaged her tender toe. Her lips twisted into a tight grimace.

Hank held her eyes and answered, “Not really.”

“His file says you hired him.”

She let out a controlled breath.

“Does it? Probably did. But he didn’t report to me.”

“He was a very handsome man. And it seems as though he was well liked. People were lined up out the door to speak to his widow.”

“He was a great guy.”

Hank coughed into his hand. “So I hear.”

“I know you’re doing some hiring. A couple dealers, a new director of security, and now the slot machine tech. I wanted to let you know you don’t need to replace him. I’ve decided to change out our slot machines.”

Hank’s head snapped up. “You what?”

Padma noticed Hank’s knee started to bounce.

She straightened, and so proud of what she was about to say, she did her best to suppress her smile.

“I did an analysis of our slot machine payouts and compared to the other casinos in the Indo-USA Gaming family, our machines pay out about $2.5 million more a year.”

She’d heard other people talk like that at business school and never dreamt those types of words would come out of her mouth.

In that order.

If she could have high-fived herself, she would have.

She wished she’d recorded this meeting so she could send it to her mother.

That would show her Padma was on top of things.

Even if it was a fluke that she’d figured any of this out. If it were even true. Padma hated numbers and only looked at the books after her original project crashed and burned.

When she first arrived, she had big plans to make over the casino decor in cream tone-on-tone with pops of fuchsia.

She had thought that color scheme would elevate her customers’ gambling experience to be serene and relaxed.

Practically spa-like.

She should have known something was off when her mother had agreed it was a fabulous idea.

Hank had listened as she described her vision and then set up a meeting with casino consultants.

They’d presented Padma with a study on the psychology of gambling, and evidence that calm didn’t pry money out of people’s hands, chaos did.

And busy, colorful carpets promoted spending and hid stains; cream with pops of fuchsia did neither.

Padma had shelved her project, realizing her mother had set her up to fail and Hank had saved her from a career-killing misstep.

She still planned to fire him, just not yet.

But with nothing else to do, Padma had opened the books.

Accounting bored Padma, so she had lined up the summary pages of other casinos the company owned side by side on her computer screen and had noted the numbers on the bottom line matched—except one.

The slot machine payouts at this casino were higher.

A lot higher.

It had to be obvious, or Padma wouldn’t have spotted it.

Even she knew that.

Looking at her now, across her desk, Hank was silent for a moment.

“How long ago did you notice that?”

She thought Hank would ask how she found out and congratulate her on her discovery.

But instead, the boob was wondering when she had realized it.

He probably felt responsible, and he should.

Until two months ago, he was running things.

“Hmmm.

Last month, I guess.”

“Did you share your findings with anyone?”

Another weird question.

“Just some people at head office when I went on that corporate retreat.”

Padma had intended to keep her cards close to her chest until she had concrete numbers to report, but standing around at the pre-dinner mixer, she’d become fed up with the other division heads looking down their noses at her—figuratively and literally—so over her cosmopolitan she had let it slip that she had found a leaky hole on the casino’s tight ship.

After all, anyone can reshape a floundering operation, but it takes vision and talent to pinpoint the cracks in a seemingly well-run machine.

Stanching the slot machines’ overpayments would increase company profits.

That alone would prove Padma belonged; she wasn’t here merely because of her mother.

Padma tried to keep her connection to her mother quiet, even using a different surname.

She’d heard the whispers about her mother being one of India’s notorious mob bosses.

Strong women gangsters were legendary in her home country: the Godmother, the Bandit Queen, Bela Aunty—and even though her mother had a master’s in engineering and a trail of successes in Silicon Valley, it was true that she did what was necessary to protect her hard-earned fortune.

Her mother spent most days ruthlessly navigating India’s rocky infrastructure, but to Padma’s chagrin, these days she was more focused on navigating her daughter’s love life.

The maternal titan of India’s underworld had decided her daughter was to be married in the next eighteen months.

Padma could have understood that timeline if she had a boyfriend, but she was decidedly single.

So, with no prospects on the horizon, her mother had hired the consultant favored by India’s top one percent—The Matchmaker.

She was an older woman, outfitted in colorful saris, with a bright manicure, heavily jeweled rings, and an extensive rolodex of bio datas.

Padma was not happy.

Padma wanted a love match.

To a tall man with a full head of hair and good teeth.

Her mother, on the other hand, didn’t care about love, height, hair, or dental charts and said Padma shouldn’t either.

Padma realized she was fighting an uphill battle after her mother had emailed her a study from just a few years back that found only three percent of Indian marriages were love matches.

Ninety-three percent of Indian women had arranged marriages.

She had no choice but to listen as her mother badgered her, insisting her future son-in-law should have at least two degrees and suitable parents.

Padma hated the word suitable.

Padma had been dodging The Matchmaker’s calls. Especially after her mother lowered the bar and decreed that Padma was agreeable to consider anyone, anywhere.

Agreeable. Another word Padma hated.

Padma had her own plans.

Gambling was on the rise in India, and since casinos were only allowed in three states so far, the growth opportunities were absurd, and Padma was going to ride that wave. Padma could never be taller than her mother, but she planned to one day not only join her on that Forbes list, but to place above her. Way above her. That would show her.

And making this casino more profitable was her first step.

Padma looked past Hank at her whiteboard. She still had to pitch her mother to seal the deal on the purchase of the new slot machines, and Hank was perfect to practice on. She planned to stand while she was on the Zoom call, but right now her feet throbbed, so for Hank, she leaned across the desk, cleared her throat, and recited her prepared lines: “The slot machines are a casino’s crown jewels. Every day, each of those machines brings in more money than any of our poker rooms. I’m going to upgrade them to new models with lower payouts and then watch the profits climb.”

She crossed her ankles and winced at the shot of pain from her blister. She took a steadying breath and said, “Hank, if head office is happy, we’re happy.”

Then exhaled. She made a point to look straight into his eyes because her mother told her, when presenting to men, being the first to look away is a sign of weakness. Padma held her gaze firm.

Hank blinked and looked at the surveillance monitors.

She’d won. She settled back in her chair.

“When are you thinking of doing this?”

Hank asked.

“I’ve ordered the slots, and they’re arriving next week. Take a look.”

She reached across her desk for the brochures, and as she flipped to the right page, she passed one to Hank. She heard him gasp, and she smiled. “I know. They’re something, aren’t they?” She glanced up and was about to point out which model but stopped. Hank looked like he’d seen a ghost. His mouth hung open, and his eyes seemed unfocused. Drops of sweat prickled his forehead.

“Are you okay?”

She followed his gaze and saw he was staring at the row of casino chips lined up on her desk. Ah. He’d noticed.

He brought his eyes to hers and held them for a brief moment. Padma tilted her head, and he croaked out, “Sorry. I swallowed a bug. Gotta go.”

He coughed and, thumping his chest, stood.

As Hank closed the door behind him, Padma squirmed in her chair with excitement. He’d taken that really well. At least until he’d swallowed that bug. Her mother had warned her that men, especially older ones, didn’t like women, especially younger ones, taking action without consulting them. But the boob seemed good.

In fact, at the end, his eyes had popped wide open in wonder.

Padma slid her polished fingernail under the first chip, delighting in the click, click as she gathered them all together.

She enjoyed the smooth heft of the stack against her palm for a moment and then nestled them into the rounded tray, leaving a space for that missing $1,000 chip.