Bubbles Ablaze by Sarah Strohmeyer

standing at the entrance of a mine, a roulette wheel in his hand. He was dressed in the same pink Izod shirt I’d seen on the corpse.
    I gasped. “That’s him! That’s the man I saw shot dead last night.”
    â€œGosh. It never occurred to me that they were one and the same.” Roxanne stared at the newspaper. “Guess I should start reading the paper instead of buying it just for the customers. Mostly I skip to the coupons and ‘Dear Abby.’ ”
    Must be genetic.
    The headline read: “Price Sure Casino Is Safe.”
    Outside came the sound of someone having great difficulty climbing the steps.
    â€œMy walk-in.” Roxanne handed me the newspaper. “The first in a month. She called this morning.” My cousin ran to the door like a school kid at a birthday party. “Mrs. Wychesko. Come in!”
    Mrs. Wychesko, a heavy jowled woman in a ratty raccoon coat and gray plastic rain scarf, entered wheezing. “Those steps, Roxy, they’ll be the death of me,” she said, removing her rain scarf and folding it into a little fan. Roxanne introduced us and we nodded and smiled at each other, but I wasn’t eager to stick around.
    I had important research to do.
    Ten minutes later I was in Roxanne’s white enamel tub with the green-blue ring around the drain, enjoying a deep, detoxifying bath and reading about Bud Price’s plans to further family togetherness through craps.
    The article was an update of Bud Price’s fight to bring casino gambling to one of the most destitute regions of Pennsylvania. It had been that destitution, Price’s excellent salesmanship and even testimony from a few has-been celebrities that prompted the legislature to issue a waiver permitting “limited” gambling on two hundred acres on Slagville’s border that Price had purchased from McMullen Coal the year before.
    However, Price needed more than the legislature’s approval. He needed state building permits—an unfathomable prospect considering his casino was sited for the Dead Zone.
    The Dead Zone was a buffer of land between McMullen Coal’s active mines and the neighboring town of Limbo, which sat on top of an underground mine fire. The fire had started one Memorial Day forty years ago when a lit cigarette ignited trash and then a band of anthracite. The blaze had been so devastating that the federal government had paid each Limbo resident forty grand to move out.
    In turn, the government barred McMullen Coal from digging under the two-hundred-acre buffer area—which later took onthe name the Dead Zone—for fear that new shafts would open pathways to the fire, bringing in dangerous oxygen and causing explosions. That land had been a white elephant for McMullen’s company—until Price offered to buy it last year, along with the mining rights, for twenty-five-thousand dollars.
    Price had retained numerous experts who testified before state officials that it was impossible for the fire to spread under the Dead Zone, provided there was no underground mining. Opposing environmentalists argued that the fire could turn at any time, new shafts or not, and they painted the picture of a casino full of grandmas at slot machines collapsing into a giant sinkhole faster than the Titanic sank into the North Atlantic.
    But their valid concerns fell on deaf ears in a region where unemployment hovered at twenty percent. Folks in Slagville wanted a casino that would bring in hotels, restaurants, an amusement park and jobs, jobs, jobs, and they pledged to descend on Harrisburg in busloads until they got it.
    The permit proposal was under advisement. State planners were expected to issue a ruling by November—after elections, the article noted.
    I studied a photo of Bud relaxing poolside at his estate in the nouveau riche Lehigh suburb of East Hills with wife, Chrissy, who was wearing a teeny-weeny black bikini. Despite her mass of ash blond hair,