The Calamity had convinced some Americans that hell was at hand -- and now Charlie Hart was driving the road that led there, Interstate 15 from Las Vegas to the California border on any given Sunday, losers beating their ways home, hungover and sick and feeling gutshot, got to go to work in the morning, lost too much money, maxed out the Visa, should not have slept with that mortgage broker from Atlantic City, he was married, I was drunk, we didn't use a rubber, should not have gone with that hooker, my last cash and now God knows what diseases, warts, viruses, rot I have in my body, stayed too long at the tables, I was up at one point, should've quit then, lost one thousand dollars or fifty thousand or five hundred, it was meant for the rent, the mortgage, the tuition, the baby's doctor or the baby's goddamn new pair of shoes that keep getting referenced at the craps tables...