“Lucky man, Dodger,” he said to me, apparently referring to the Dodgers cap I always wear to Commerce, to augment my chosen posture of regular guy.
“Not so lucky,” I said. “Unlike some people, I just know what I’m doing.”
The other players at the table moaned and shifted a little. This wasn’t what they wanted to hear. But it was undeniable.
“We’ll see,” the Russian said.
I smelled profit in that conference room. My watch showed 11:15. One more hour, I told myself. I’ll milk this cow, and then it’s off to bed.
By 1 a.m., I was up several hundred bucks, no mean feat at a low-stakes table. But the Russian knew no play other than the check-raise. He may have folded one in ten openers. Other players tried to take advantage, but I had them read as well. Finally, the old dude to my right got up, cracked his bones, and mumbled off into the sooty night. The Russian immediately stood up and plunked himself in the chair.
“Now I will show you, Dodger,” he said. “Now we will play poker.”
And poker I did. His aggressive play dug him deeper and deeper holes. He did win a few hands, getting me to fold when I had bupkus. But he folded nothing himself, and I just kept adding plastic trays. By 2:30, I had nearly a thousand bucks in front of me. Karen had been buzzing my cell phone since midnight, and at one point left me a text message saying, Don’t fuck this meeting up, Nick … Even she couldn’t argue with a thousand-dollar haul.
I stood up, taking my trays with me, sliding the dealer, another anonymous, semi-attractive Filipina, a ten-dollar chip.
“Where you going, Dodger?” said the Russian.
“I’ve got a big meeting tomorrow.”
“So when do I get my money back?”
“Ain’t your money anymore,” I said, and the table exploded with laughter.
As I turned away, I didn’t see the Russian seethe, and I was too busy making a joke to the cashier about unmarked bills to notice him picking up the phone. Maybe if I’d skipped going to the can, I would have made it home that night.
I was making my way past the plaster sphinxes when a 310-pound side of Slavic beef slid into my purview.
“You took boss’s money tonight,” he said. “And boss doesn’t like to lose at poker.”
Somehow I guessed the identity of his boss, and tried to pull together an instant plan of escape in my mind. I mumbled, “Sorry,” and turned on my heels, angling toward where I thought a security guard might be seated. Instead, I whirled into another side of beef. Briefly, I felt my arms getting pinned behind me, and then something heavy on my head. A vague sensation of green digital numbers, blinking in random succession, passed before my eyes, and then I said goodbye to consciousness.
I woke with John Henry pounding rocks inside my head and the impression of dusty sunlight on my eyelids. A tentative opening revealed that I was in a hotel room, and a whiff indicated that smoking was allowed. Instinctively, I felt for my wallet. It was there, but pretty thin. My cell phone was also still with me, in my front jeans pocket. I removed it to find it out of juice. I turned my head. The clock beside the bed read 10:45 a.m. Less than five hours away from my meeting.
I sat up, and then stood, and found that the pounding wasn’t bad enough to prevent me from walking, or from taking a piss. In fact, the mirror showed me not looking any worse than usual, even a little better. Eight hours of sleep was eight hours, even if it was artificially induced. The sound of bad hotel porn was coming from beyond the attaching door. I opened it.
The Russian sat with six other guys, placidly watching some girl-on-girl action. Cigar smoke suffused the room like toxic waste. A poker table sat by the window, silently waiting to play its part. He turned to regard me.
“Our princess has awoken,” he said.
“Can I leave now?” I asked. “My wife is worried about me. You’ve proven your point, whatever that is.”
“We’ve got some poker to play,” he said.
“Haven’t we played enough?” I asked.
“Let me explain something to you,” he said. “I don’t lose. Ever. And especially not to guys like you.”
“But you did lose.”
One of his cronies stood, walked over to me, and smacked me across the mouth, drawing a little bit of blood from my lower lip. Goddamnit, I thought, I could actually fucking miss my meeting here.
“The game isn’t over yet,” said the Russian. “You took $1,000 from me, and I intend to win it back.”
He explained the rules to me. We’d each get $500 worth of chips, though my chips were, essentially, air. He got to keep the money, which was rightfully his. If I won his chips, I got to go home. If he won mine, he got to shoot me in the face. Those were higher stakes than usual, and I started to sweat.
A knock came at the door. It was a Filipina, not surprisingly, pushing a cart stacked with orange juice, eggs, and smoked salmon. If these guys were thugs, at least they were generous with the buffet. The Filipina would also, the Russian informed me, serve as our dealer for the day.
“But first,” he said, “we eat.”
I figured it wouldn’t help me to say that I was in a hurry, so I dug in. By the time we were done eating, it was nearly noon. As the first hand was dealt, I felt more jittery at the table than ever before. His cronies were playing with us, but it was obvious from the beginning that they were decoys, there to win small pots that neither the Russian nor I had a shot at; it was a two-player game, with props.
I had to make that meeting. Missing it would mean the end of my career, and maybe my marriage. So I played aggressively. This was exactly what the Russian wanted. It perfectly matched his style of play. If you re-raise a raiser when the odds are bad, or even mediocre, he will bury you. For an hour, he whittled away at my chips, and then took a huge pot when he drew an inside flush to beat my pocket kings. I looked down at my pile and realized that I was $150 away from death. That was the last thing I wanted. I took a breath and prayed patience.
By 1:45, I was back up to $500. The Russian saw what was happening, and he cursed my ability to fold a bad hand, something that he’d apparently never learned. I stayed quiet, occasionally stealing little glances at the digital clock by the bed. At this point, I knew that I was going to escape with my life, or at least assumed that I would. But if I didn’t do it soon, I wouldn’t have much of a life left. Still, I had to play carefully. It took me another forty-five minutes to get up to $800. There would be no time to go home and shower, but I could at least buy some deodorant at Walgreens before the meeting. It was time to roll ’em.
I drew a queen-nine, not the best opener, but winnable. It didn’t matter what the Russian drew, of course. He raised me regardless. I saw him, and re-raised. He did the same back, and onward until the betting was capped.
The flop revealed a second queen and some junk cards. His chance at a flush draw was nil, and a straight seemed unlikely. I’d probably flopped top pair, so I laid down a big bet. He followed, of course, and kept laying down chips. By the river, it was pretty certain that he’d bust out. The dealer called for us to show our hands. I had my queens. He had a pair of sevens, ace high.
“Well,” I said, standing up, and then backing away toward the door, “it was certainly tense, and you really proved something today—”
“Don’t fuck with me, Dodger,” the Russian said.
“Just let him win, dumbshit,” I heard a crony say, and then I felt everything go black again. Consciousness and I had a tenuous relationship that day. My world disintegrated around me, and it was night again.
I woke to the sensation of my head being dumped in a bucket of ice water, never pleasant under any circumstance. When I emerged, gasping for breath, one of the Russian’s lummoxes was holding my shirt collar. He had a huge wad of bills, which he thrust into my hand.
“Take this and go,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Boss is asshole,” he said. “I’m tired of him doing this all the time.”
“
I’m not the first?”
“You’re not the first this week,” he said.
“But why save me?”
“You’re good at cards,” he said. “I’m tired of being around people who are bad at cards.”
“At least I’m good at something,” I said. “Thank you.”
I peeled a hundred-dollar bill off the stack and slapped it into his palm.
“Buy yourself a lap dance tonight,” I said.
“Or maybe I pay rent this month,” he said.
“That too,” I said.
“They’re eating lunch downstairs,” he said. “Go now.”
I took a step forward, but that wasn’t happening until I vomited into the toilet. With that business completed, I saw that it was ten till 3:00. I wouldn’t look good doing it, but I could still make the meeting. I thanked the lummox again, and walked into the hall.
The Russian and his cronies were stepping off the elevator. I looked around. There were stairs at the end of the hall. I tore off toward them, with the Russians in hot pursuit. They might have caught me, too, if the room hadn’t been on the third floor.
A quick orientation in the parking lot showed that I was near my car, which I found easily, even though the lot was no less full than it had been when I’d pulled in sixteen hours before. The Russians kept coming. I heard the Cadillac SUV next to me beep, and I realized that it was their car. I peeled out of my spot, flipped into reverse, and then accelerated forward at an angle, aiming for the SUV’s rear taillight. It might not have done much damage, but it felt symbolic. They were far enough behind me that I was on the 5, going north, before they could figure out my direction.
Then I realized. They’d filched my wallet, so they probably knew where I lived. I needed to call Karen, to warn her. But I didn’t have a working phone. The clock showed ten after 3:00. The traffic report said that there was an accident at the 101 interchange. I wasn’t moving.
Even on an ordinary day, an overturned tractor-trailer can destroy your plans in L.A. I don’t know why I expected anything different; my meeting was never going to happen. So I formulated a plan: I’d drive to my agent’s office, so he could fire me. But I’d at least tell him the story so he could call Karen and warn her not to come home, or hire a bodyguard, or something.
Oh, man.
Was I fucked or what?
Still, I did have $1,000 in my pocket, and that was enough. I couldn’t go back to Commerce for a while, and maybe never. Who knew how often the Russian haunted those well-trod carpets? My frequent-player’s card, however, was good to go in Gardena. I’d check in there, get a room for sixty-nine dollars a night, and easily win that back at the tables, no problem. Even if I hit a bad streak, I could probably survive for a month with what I had left in my checking account. And if I ran into a really good table one night, I might even be able to win Karen back with a wad of bills and a tale of pure success. Greater women, I figured, have been seduced by less. It wasn’t the best situation in the world. But at least I had the skills to win big.
So I turned my car around at the next exit. I drove off in anticipation of a big night, and of hundreds of nights to come. Because there was nothing like a night spent playing poker: It was the great equalizer, the great humanizer, and the great eraser of differences. Except when it wasn’t. But the hope remained for every numbers nerd, every bored housewife, every laid-off trucker, every hack screenwriter, and all the other poor saps out there who woke up one morning only thinking about cards and subsequently went about overturning their lives. Like everyone else in the world, it seemed, I floated along on a current of odds. Still, I figured that a little self-understanding would make me a dangerous man at the tables. And so I drove on, along the endless highways, thinking only of flopping trips, ace high on the river.
FISH
BY LIENNA SILVER
Fairfax District
Ivan Denisovich hated fish, but was obliged to buy several kilos of the rock-frozen cod. The loud and obnoxious saleswoman wrapped it in a piece of hard brown paper, her swollen red fingers with chipped nail polish barely bending from the moisture and cold. He obediently stuffed the package into the green net shopping bag, and struggled through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, almost losing his scarf to the pressing comrades.
Outside, he meticulously rebuttoned his coat and patted the treasured fish in the bag with his lined leather gloves. He knew Sofia Arkadievna would be happy with his purchase. A fat dvornik, an old woman in a padded cotton coat and white apron, was cleaning the sidewalk, her giant spade rhythmically scraping against the compressed snow. His breath fogged around him as he walked home through the narrow Arbat streets, listening to the crisp crunch under his feet. This sound was like balm to his wounds, mitigating the repulsive inevitability of having to eat and, even worse, smell the fish for a week.
“Ivan … Ivan … wake up!” He felt his wife’s elbow poke his ribs. “Come on. Turn that damn box off. Let’s go to bed.”
Ivan Denisovich opened his eyes and stared at the fan that was slowly spinning above his head. Where was he? Boje moy! Good God! The Russian snow and the fish melted away, and instead he was sitting in Los Angeles on his brown velour couch next to his wife, Sofia Arkadievna. The television murmured something in English that he couldn’t understand. The Asian commentator smiled and glanced at him as if she was a guest in their living room.
The apartment was dark except for the flicker of the screen. He knew he was home, but it wasn’t quite right. He put on his slippers and silently shuffled behind Sofia Arkadievna to the bedroom. He didn’t want to break the spell, still hoping to return to the frosted winter day in his dream and the hated frozen cod. He yearned to follow the icy street past the familiar tram stop, across the rails and through the arch into the dirty Moscow yard, past the elderly ladies gossiping on the bench, and up the broken stairs that reeked of fried fish.
He resented that Sofia Arkadievna had interrupted his dream. Lying on his back, listening to her scratchy snoring, he stared at the trees outside through the tulle curtains. The constant summer of Southern California was gentle on his bones, but turned his heart inside out. This country gave him everything that he could dream of, except he never dreamed of it. His eyes skipped across the white-and-gold lacquer bedroom that Sofia Arkadievna bought on a layaway plan from a neighborhood store. They didn’t have to wait or get permission to buy the furniture. Just went and bought it, and it was delivered a few weeks later. Same thing with the furniture in the living room. Their daughter Sveta and her husband Alex, that red-haired putz with an idiotic smile, bought it for them when they finally moved to their government-subsidized apartment. Nothing had any history of his life imprinted on it; nothing held memory for him. It was all new and alien, and still smelled of fresh composition board. What was there to say?
He had grown into a pattern of sleeping during the day and staying awake at night, lying in bed and remembering things. It was as if he was trying to live on Moscow time. Sofia Arkadievna was mad, and Ivan wanted to go back to normal, but somehow couldn’t. Sveta said he was depressed and should see a doctor, get one of those depression pills. To hell with that. He was not taking any brain pills. What if he wouldn’t be able to remember anything? Oh no. No pills would help him with his condition. And then, who said people had to be happy all the time? How would they even know they were happy if there was no difference from one day to another? Come to think of it, being happy all the time would be just as tiring as being unhappy.
Sofia Arkadievna turned on her side and made him conform. Her soft breasts and belly cushioned and heated his aching back, the only things that were comforting and familiar in his life. He put his hands under his cheek and drifted into a restless sleep.
In the morning, Ivan Denisovich took a shower, flexing his biceps as he rinsed off the soap. His skin was sagging in a rippling sack under the arm, but his muscles beneath were still firm. Satisfied, he turned off the hot water and stood under the ice-cold jet, as he had done for fifty
years, until his whole body burned in a tingle.
The sweet yeasty smell of blinis and smoldering butter wafted from the kitchen. He could hear Sofia Arkadievna bang pots, pans, and dishes in her usual morning whirlwind of activity. She was plump but not fat, and although she had changed through the years—her cheeks drooped, and her skin and eyes had lost their luster—she had not slowed down, and she kept her commanding attitude and agile walk.
“Stop admiring yourself. Breakfast is getting cold!” yelled Sofia Arkadievna through the door.
“Coming.” Ivan Denisovich looked at his stupefied face in the foggy mirror. His nose had become longer and fleshier, even bulbous. His jaw had lost definition, and jowls flapped under his mouth on both sides, reminding him of catfish whiskers. A sorry sight. He shrugged, splashed Grey Flannel over his flushed cheeks, and pulled on the blue Adidas jogging suit.
The TV was already on, Russian programming delivered via satellite right to their Southern California home.
“A nightmare!” said Sofia Arkadievna, rolling blinis onto her plate. “Look what those blood-thirsty Chechens are doing again! There’s no end to it … Sour cream or jam?”
“I’ll take the Nutella,” replied Ivan Denisovich, sitting down.
The screen flashed scenes from Grozny, where another car had been blown up and charred corpses were strewn across the pavement. Women in flowery babushkas wept, wiping away tears with dirty rags.
“Beasts. They are not human!” exclaimed Sofia Arkadievna, and sauntered over to the refrigerator. “How can they live like that?”
“It’s their home.”
“You want some juice?” She ignored his remark.
“Neh, my stomach is gurgly.” Ivan Denisovich glazed the inside of a blini with a generous layer of Nutella and slowly rolled it around the fork into a tube.
Home. What a strange word. Its meaning confused Ivan Denisovich. His mother died long ago, just before the war. And his father, after being liberated from Dachau, was sent directly to the Gulag, where he died after three months of hard labor. Funny how memory worked. The thought of home triggered the image of his exhausted father. Did he know that Ivan, then age fourteen, was also shipped to Siberia, as the son of a traitor of the people? It all seemed to have happened only yesterday, and at the same time in another life.
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