Low Rollers : Forget the plush suites, limos and free shows. The good life for millions of gamblers, many from Southern California, starts when they catch a tour bus they pay little or nothing to ride. : We’re Off to See Each Other Lose in ‘Land of Oz’

It’s quarter past 8 Wednesday morning and three of us sit idly at the corner of 9th and Figueroa, the southwest rim of downtown’s skyscraper canyons. Cars and pedestrians rush past us to work. We don’t care; we’re not punching the clock today. We’re waiting for our dreams to come true.

The free bus to Las Vegas, though, is running late.

That’s fine with me. And it’s fine with Ree, an off-duty RTD driver who is sitting on her end of the bench, washing down her pastrami-with-pickles and chocolate mini-doughnuts with a Coke.

It’s not fine with the guy in the Bart Simpson cap and the jean jacket. He can hardly contain himself. If he misses this bus, he might miss . . . well, who knows what his dreams are made of. But clearly, he is a nervous wreck. He is jittery, maybe mid-30s, carrying a shopping tote and an improvised garment bag--a piece of pink, trash-bag plastic with a hanger poking through it. And his nervous chatter is making me nuts.

What time is it? Maybe the bus already left. What time is it? Are you sure it didn’t leave already? What time is it?

God, he says, what he really wants to do is spend about three weeks in Vegas. Yeah, three weeks in Vegas. Three weeks would be great.

Three weeks sounds a bit excessive to me.

“Better than sleeping in an alley,” he says.

The conversation lurches off its rails.

A few minutes later, he looks at the gold ring on my left hand.

“You married?”

“Yep.”

“So. What? You’re a compulsive gambler sneaking off to Vegas without your husband?” He giggles. He doesn’t want an answer. He’s already in Las Vegas, bucks up with the high rollers.

“Yeah, Vegas,” he says, gazing into the sky, trying to sound worldly. “Land of Oz.”

The bus finally pulls up at 8:40 a.m., the doors open and a shock wave of reeking disinfectant rolls over us.

“Don’t worry,” says a lady who boarded in Gardena. “The smell goes away after awhile.”

It is coming from the toilet. At least the bus has a toilet, for which I am grateful. Until I need to use it three hours later. When I try, the door keeps popping open. So I return to my seat, cross my legs and pray for Vegas.

The bus stops twice more to pick up would-be millionaire. In the parking lot of a shuttered Bob’s Big Boy in West Covina, we wait for 15 minutes for a rendezvous with a van from Orange County.

We stop again in Ontario, where we pick up a lanky fellow who turns out to be Jim, our host. Imagine that! A host on a rickety bus ride across the desert. We total 20, maybe five singles and half a dozen clumps of friends or married couples. We are black, white and Latino.

And we are low rollers. At least we look like low rollers. No. We are definitely low rollers. Why else would we take the free, 24-hour turnaround to Las Vegas?

You may wonder why there is a free bus to Vegas. A casino charters it.

It’s the Field of Dreams school of business logic: If you bring them, they will gamble. Midweek is slack time in Casinoland, hence the freebie. Los Angeles-based Variety Bus Lines has operated this charter for seven years for the Sands hotel. Its bus plucks riders every Wednesday from several Southern California street corners, as long as 20 people or more have committed to the trip. Reservations are required. Variety also offers Friday night and Saturday morning turnarounds. But the weekend trips cost: $10 per person, $15 if you want to go to Laughlin, son of Las Vegas.

Jim, our host, has come to life. He is gruffly cheerful, and recognizes some of the riders. He passes out cups and water, “for those on medication.”

“Hang onto these cups now,” he barks. “You ain’t gettin’ but one.”

“Now,” he says, holding a blue plastic garbage bag, “I don’t want no cups, no butts, no chewin’ gum wrappers on the floor. And smoking in the last three rows only.”

He tells us the Sands is sponsoring the trip and, in exchange for this remarkable corporate largess, “they ask that you stay with them for five hours and then you got seven hours to do your own thang.”

Then he explains how the Sands will monitor our gambling time. Apparently, if we play quarters, we can meet our commitment in about 1 1/2 hours by earning points. Playing 20 quarters earns one point and we need 35 points to get home free. They are counted on our EZ Money Card, a piece of plastic that is inserted into the machines much like an automated-teller card. Assuming every quarter is lost--how do you think they build those high-rises?--35 points costs $175.

Near as I can figure, we are expected to be what we are: low-rolling yokels. “If you’ve never done this before,” Jim says, “I recommend you stay with the nickel slots.”

If we play the nickel slots (or table games), our play is measured in 30-minute increments. We prop up a gold, greeting-card-sized pamphlet on the machine, and every half hour, a casino employee comes around and signs it. I picture myself chained to the nickel slot machines.

“Now,” says Jim. “You don’t have to gamble all at once. You can do it at different times, but if I were you, I’d try to get the signatures at once so you won’t be bothered with getting home. If you don’t get your 10 signatures, you pay $30 to get home.”

In front of me, Mr. Oz perks up. “So, where do they sign? Do they sign as soon as you start to play? So they bring drinks as soon as you start to play, right?”

A dust storm is blowing like beige chiffon across the desert, the bus is shimmying in the wind and the scamming has begun.

“Thanks,” Mr. Oz says to a middle-aged New Jersey man on vacation. “You just saved me 30 bucks.”

“How?” I inquire. (The tacit rules allow me to butt in. We are in this together; it’s us against the system.)

Mr. Oz explains that the bus driver has no idea who comes on and off each bus, so he can take next week’s free bus home if he decides to stay.

“Wow,” says Mr. Oz. “That’s $30 more I have for gambling.” If he has more than a few bucks, I am Melinda, the First Lady of Magic.

Behind me, a woman’s voice says, “Earlene, if we make any kind of money at all, let’s stay !” Likewise, Ree says if she scores big, she’ll ditch this dog and take the next bird home.

Just over the state line, Jim welcomes us to the “Silver State,” and tells us that, “it is customary at this time” to take up a collection for the driver.

“I recommend you start with a dollar, and anything else you can give is appreciated,” he says. Intimidated, I cough up a buck.

Mr. Oz demurs. I knew he would, and secretly I am rooting for him. “I’ll catch you on the way back when I’m a millionaire.” The joke is hollow; Jim’s face sours.

After passing the bucket, he announces, “Well, that’s $19 for the driver, almost 100%. Thank you kindly.”

We arrive at the Sands about 2 p.m. It is the moment of truth: Jim says that if we have luggage and plan to take it off the bus, we must pay $30. No sneaking away, in other words. Mr. Oz is in the toilet and doesn’t hear the announcement, so when he begins to debark with his pitiful baggage, Jim stops him. In a split-second, he gives up his luggage, calculating, I imagine, that what he’s got is nothing compared to what he’ll have if he gets lucky. Big, fat depressing if .

I walk into the Sands, eat lunch, then settle down in front of a nickel slot machine. I prop my little gold pamphlet on the machine, and almost immediately a woman comes by and signs it. Yippee! I’ve already fooled them. She thinks I’ve been playing for half an hour and it has only been minutes. It is 2:30 p.m.

I play for about half an hour, then check my watch: 2:35. What??? I play another hour and check it again: 2:40. My right hand is filthy from nickel grime and my shoulder hurts. The cocktail waitress who took my club soda order has left for Tahiti. Despair mounts: How can I do this for five hours?

I switch to video poker. It takes longer to lose your nickels; all you have to do is push buttons and time passes faster. After staring at a video screen for two hours, though, I begin seeing 10 cards per draw instead of five. Time for a break.

Someone says “Persian Gulf.” On the TV above the bar, CNN says Baghdad is being bombed. Incomprehensibly, people are chatting and playing the slots instead of looking worried or crying.

I rush out for air, then walk across the street to the Mirage, where people have gathered in the cavernous sports bar.

Huge television screens cover the three-story walls. On three of them, President Bush is saying the nation has gone to war. On the others, the Celtics play Golden State, the Cavaliers play the Heat, the Pacers play the Bucks. On another wall, greyhounds chase around a track. The patrons seem oddly calm. Only once is there even a fleeting sense of community: When the CNN reporter says no U.S. or Saudi planes have been lost in the first sorties, a cheer goes up. In this context, the war seems like another contest, a spectacle for the bettors, more grist for the oddsmakers.

I drag myself back to the Sands. Two more hours of gambling to go. It is just before 7 p.m. and I plop in front of the nickel poker machines. As I play, I notice the woman next to me has stopped moving. Not only that, but she is standing behind me, peering over my shoulder.

She’s from Winnipeg, she says, and I’m sitting at her lucky machine. I offer to move. What difference can it possibly make which machine steals my nickels? We trade seats and I begin a mean winning streak. Well, mean for the nickel machines. The woman from Winnipeg looks like she has just sucked a lemon.

I’m just punching the buttons, putting in time.

“You just erased three of a kind,” says my Canadian friend.

I don’t care. I’m tired, my eyes hurt and the distance between my stool and the gambling machine is a crime against ergonomics.

It’s exhausting to spend so much time sitting. And the cocktail waitresses--and free drinks--are as rare as royal flushes.

Even when they find you, they can be snarly.

“Am I supposed to live on that?” snaps a waitress after a man deposits a two-quarter tip on her tray for his free drink. She isn’t even talking to him, though. She’s talking to me.

Hey, honey, at least you get to walk around.

Finally, 10 signatures! I’ve done my time! I yelp in excitement and people give me funny looks. A scream normally signifies a big win, and is accompanied by the clattering sound of the metal-on-metal Las Vegas waterfall. I am ecstatic about losing $17! I am free!

But what now? The bus won’t leave for five hours. I wander into the night and up the strip to a Chinese restaurant. Dinner kills a mere hour, so I decide to take in the Sands floor show: “Melinda, the First Lady of Magic.”

The show is dreadful. It’s not really a magic show. It’s a cheesy variety show with a juggler and a pair of drumming, gagging Argentine gauchos. Each act is punctuated by dancers whose main talents are generously displayed by their skimpy costumes.

Melinda is no magician; she is a very pretty dancer who just pretends. Badly. In the very worst now-you-see-it, now-you-sort-of-don’t tradition, she awkwardly conjures jungle beasts--a lion, a tiger. In a particularly demeaning trick, she oversees the transformation of a white horse and rider into a white pony and midget. That this takes place behind a large sheet doesn’t seem to bother the audience, which is under the illusion, I suppose, that it is watching a magic show.

Melinda’s most endearing mannerism is turning her G-string backside to the audience, then looking over her shoulder and camping with wide come-hither eyes. I can’t go yon fast enough.

The show ends at midnight. That means two hours until the bus leaves. A few bus mates wander around, looking dazed. I sit at a stool in front of a quarter slot machine next to the lounge and play desultorily, just so I can watch the lounge act, which features a man and woman singing ‘70s pop standards. It’s hard to appreciate the act even as camp when you’re this tired and have nowhere to go. Live-and-let-live enthusiasm has died, overtaken by giant, ugly judgmentalism. This act is a mockery of a sham. Perhaps my mood would be different if . . . . Note to myself: Try winning next time.

The bus arrives at 1:45 a.m. I board, prove I’ve done my time and settle in for the ride home. Two chubby, middle-aged ladies lumber toward their seats.

“You got everything, honey?” one asks.

“Except my money,” replies her pal.

There is no trace of Mr. Oz. He has vanished into the Emerald City. His pitiful belongings are removed from the bus and wherever he is, he’ll probably never know they are sitting in an office at the Sands.

Ree climbs aboard and says she didn’t do very well. But it turns out, in a conversation the following week, that she won $600. Or so she says.

“I always tell people I don’t do well,” she explains. “I don’t tell people my business.”

This was Ree’s first trip to Vegas since 1986. She used to go almost every week and claims she won between $600 and $800 each trip, playing mostly craps and some slots. Then she started losing.

“I don’t like to lose,” she says. “And plus the trip is so exhausting. So I quit going.”

The ride home is long and dark and the rickety bus shudders across the desert, its heater working overtime. We drop off folks in Ontario and again in West Covina.

Even if you can fall asleep on the bus, you don’t sleep soundly or wake rested.

After spending more than 24 hours awake, life is tinged with the surrealism of fatigue. The towers of downtown Los Angeles loom, lit in rosy golden hues of sunrise, more lovely than all the blinking lights of Las Vegas. Now I know I need some sleep.

The bus stops at 9th and Figueroa. Ree and I step off. She heads toward another corner where she’ll catch the RTD home. Ree says she won’t be riding the free Las Vegas bus anytime soon. Takes too much out of you; next time she gets the urge, she’ll take a plane.

“It’s a long way up there,” she says. “You gotta prepare your mind for that trip.”

No kidding.