A tumbling ballet of dominoes, forever changing their spots. Dig that tumbling! Even the air was excited, loaded with messages, buzzing out loud. Blurbflies, singing the streets alive with adverts. Play to win! Play to win! And all over the city that wet Friday evening, three hours from midnight and surrounded by the rain, hordes of punters were clacking their little bones on coffee tables and bar tops, computer desks and kitchen counters, watching the dots pulsate in tune as the theme song started up. In offices and hospitals, bedsits and penthouses; all-night shopping malls and non-stop garages; in restaurants, cinemas and whorehouses; in cars and taxis, and even on the trains and buses; anywhere there was a private TV or a radio or a public screen, all the gamblers were stroking their hard-earned domino bones, hoping that Lady Luck would come up dancing, just for them. Chaos fever 1999 style, running high. Bringing the city to stillness that night, and every Friday night, as the players steeled their hearts, took a collective breath, honed their bones, rubbed their lucky charms, chanted prayers to the gods of circumstance, sold their souls to the joker.
