by Mark Joseph
“You gamble? Play the slots?”
“No.”
“Wha’d you go to Reno for?”
“To ski on Mount Rose.”
“Ah ha! A winter tourist. Can I smoke in your cab?”
“No.”
“Can we negotiate that?”
“No.”
“You’re not a lot of fun, Driver.”
“This is a cab, Mr. Passenger, not an amusement park.”
“Sorry. I’ll just sit back, shut up, and dream about the old days when a cigarette was just a smoke.”
The old days. The game had been born one night in Alex’s parents’ garage on Alvarado Street. They used a big cable-spool for a table, and those old clay chips, and during that first night they all fell in love with the game. Alex had a book, Poker According to Maverick, that explained the odds, told them what a poker face was, described simple strategies (don’t stay in if you can’t beat the cards you can see), and served as a rule book. They played until dawn that first night and every night for the next week. Simple-minded pop psychologists would call their game “male bonding,” but it was more than that. They became part of a history and tradition of card players and gamblers they couldn’t exactly define but which resonated deep in their souls. It didn’t require analysis. They loved it and lived it and let it sweep them away like the current of a mighty river.
“I call.”
“I raise two bits.”
“You raise, you son of a bitch? What d’ya got? A straight? Your high card is only the four of spades.”
“Pay up and find out, chump.”
Smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, they’d played cards and Alex’s dad had had the good sense to leave them alone. They could hear Alex’s parents arguing upstairs.
“Do you know what they’re doing down there? Smoking and drinking and gambling.”
“I know exactly what they’re doing, and if they weren’t doing it here where they’re safe, they’d be doing it in the back room of a pool hall on Divisadero Street.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because that’s what I did when I was their age.”
“Well, Alex has to study.”
“Don’t worry. He’s going to be all right. They’re good boys. Go to bed.”
They were transformed by the game. Alex became the wizard, Charlie the reckless perennial loser, Dean the stodgy conservative, Nelson the party animal, and Bobby—it always came down to Bobby and Alex in a showdown when they had to lay their cards on the table. They were the real players, the fierce competitors—Bobby who played by instinct and Alex the maniac who learned card tricks, read poker books, and studied accounts of famous games by notorious gamblers. They played through the spring and summer of 1962 and as often as possible during their busy senior year at prestigious Lowell High School, finding time for a few hours of cards between family obligations, part-time jobs, and college entrance exams.
In June of 1963 they graduated and faced the inevitable of going their separate ways. Alex was headed for New York City and Columbia; Bobby, who wised up after failing math in the seventh grade, was admitted to Berkeley; Dean had an athletic scholarship to play football up north in Oregon; Nelson was southbound for UCLA; and Charlie, a less than stellar student, was going to live at home, work for Hooper Fish and go to San Francisco City College. Like pollen, they’d been cast to the four winds. With the profound solemnity of adolescence they made a pact to return to San Francisco once a year to play cards, but that was in the rosy future. Meanwhile it was a glorious summer of girls—strip poker, oh boy—and five card stud. Years later, on those rare occasions when Bobby allowed himself to reminisce, he realized that 1963 had been the last year of innocence for them and all of America. Charismatic Jack Kennedy was president and no one had heard of Vietnam or Lee Harvey Oswald. They played cards, went to the beach, got their tattoos, climbed aboard Dean’s father’s boat and went for a ride up the river.
Boom, fragmentation grenade, and Bobby never went to Berkeley. Instead, the day after their journey up the Feather River he walked into the Oakland Induction Center—he could still remember the smell of disinfectant and sweat—took his physical, stepped across the yellow line and was herded on the bus to Fort Ord just like that. To say he never looked back would be an exaggeration, but he didn’t look back often. He didn’t look forward much, either, making no plans and living solely in the present, if not in oblivion. He hadn’t intended to stay in the army twenty years; every time his reenlistment rolled around he re-upped because the Army took damned good care of him. The closed world of the military had shielded him from everything but himself—all that cabbage on his chest cut a lot of slack; and when he retired he played cards because that was the only thing he knew how to do except make war and drink and inject heroin into his veins.
Poker had saved him. He wanted to play, exactly why he wasn’t sure, and since he couldn’t play stoned and drunk he endured withdrawal and detox and kept playing. Occasionally he fell off the wagon and sometimes chipped a little dope, but he stayed clean enough to play a few hours a day somewhere. There is no shortage of poker in America. Poker is the great American game, and anyone can play. Anyone does, and when anyone has a few bucks and thinks he’s pretty good, sooner or later he sits down in a clean, shiny casino poker room with Bobby McCorkle. La de da, check and raise, fool. Bobby gobbled up the rubes and made his rent and child support, no sweat. And when he was tap city, there was always the pension check every month.
He was good-looking, always smiling and exuding an unrepentant hustler’s charm. Bobby came on slick, sarcastic, bright and brash in a way some women found attractive. In bed, most asked right away about the ace of diamonds tattooed on his arm, and he lied and made up stories about a tattoo parlor in Saigon. If they didn’t ask, he saw them again. Three never asked, and he married them. Two had his kids; one lived in Florida and the other in Chicago. It didn’t take long for the charm to wear thin, crushed by booze, dope, car wrecks, losing streaks, and white-hot psychic shrapnel. None of the women ever reached his core, a searing morass of trauma and suppressed rage. They only saw the effect, the rolling disaster called Bobby McCorkle. He’d disappear for weeks at a time and then call from New Orleans or Las Vegas saying he was coming home with a hundred grand. When he arrived two weeks later, he had five thousand left and a fresh collection of bruises and tracks. When the women realized he wasn’t going to change, they left. None of his wives or girlfriends ever heard a word about the Feather River.
What had happened during one night at Shanghai Bend was the central event of his life, the crucible from which the rest of his days were formed, but he had to admit that he wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. He was certain of his responsibility, but in those moments when the memory forced its way into his consciousness and he tried to recall the exact sequence of events, he saw a few pieces clearly but there were blanks. Some gaps had been there the following day because he’d been monstrously drunk. That he knew for sure. Other blank spots were created by his erasing them from his memory. They were just too painful to remember.
It occurred to him that if he stopped ruminating and just let Driver take him to Reno, he might cop some dope and kill himself with an overdose, thus adding a final episode of cowardice and guilt to his repertoire of reprehensible acts. He could take Shanghai Bend to the Reno morgue tonight without ever having uttered those two words to any living person, two words that said his life had run into a waterfall on the Feather River and careened in a new direction, a bearing that wasn’t marked on any compass.
Exile on Main Street. Nowhereville. Heartbreak Hotel in downtown Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World. Shark music, can you hear it? Dum dum Dum dum Dum dum. Remember that kid on Market Street, the three card monte dealer? Bobby! You dumb fuck, you’re him, trying to get over with a clumsy trick, a little sleight of hand, a cheap hustle.
I’m better than that. I don’t cheat. I’ve never cheated.
Well, whoop
dee doo. Want a medal, or a chest to pin it on?
There were advantages and disadvantages to living exclusively in the present rather than the past or future, or some combination as most people do. Zen monks live in the present as do card players, artists, sociopaths, and soldiers in combat. Living in the present is always risky, without security or equity, with no deductible, capital gain, or tax write-off, and since most people practice risk avoidance as a guiding principle, they never experience the present. They may gamble but they rarely risk anything of value. They can’t possibly imagine a human being who risks everything every minute on every hand. They’d have a heart attack if they pushed eighty thousand dollars into the pot and said, “I raise.” Damn. Bobby had lost that one, but he’d walked away with a thrill that was almost as good as winning. He’d had the balls to make the bet and he got beat, c’est la vie. He’d done it before and won, and he’d win again. He was a pro. He knew the odds.
The driver broke into his thoughts by saying, “Open the window and you can smoke. Okay?”
“What a gal. You’re terrific. Thanks. I appreciate that. What do you do when you’re not driving your cab?”
“What do you do when you’re not playing poker?”
“You’re a tough lady, you know that? But I’ll tell you, anyway. I used to drink, and that filled a lot of time, but since I don’t drink anymore, I watch TV. In the winter it’s cold in Reno so I go to Vegas and watch TV there.”
“And play poker.”
“That’s right, and play cards.”
“It sounds pretty dismal, all that TV.”
“Fantasy, young lady, is infinitely preferable to reality, unless you’re rich and can make your fantasies come true. Are you rich? I didn’t think so. I used to read books, lots of books, but after a while I read everything worth reading. Now I watch TV. My name is Bob, by the way. Got a boyfriend?”
“You weren’t gonna ask any stupid questions, remember?”
“I’m just trying to make conversation, that’s all. A guy tonight caught me talking to myself. I’ll tell you what. You ask the questions.”
“Okay. Why were you in San Francisco?”
“For a card game.”
“You win?”
“I decided not to play.”
“Why not? You a good poker player?”
“I’m a pro. What does that tell you?”
“It doesn’t tell me why you didn’t play.”
“No. Maybe I’m not sure why myself. It’s a high stakes game. There’s real money to be made in that game.”
“Or lost. For every winner there’s a loser, right? Seems to me like you’re out four hundred bucks.”
“I can win that back tonight in Reno, but there’s some things in life, you lose them and you can never get them back.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Innocence.”
“Well, gee whiz, Mr. Passenger, you’re a genuine philosopher.”
Chortling, Bobby rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. “Where are we?” he asked. They’d been on the road no more than thirty minutes.
“Almost to the Carquinez Bridges,” she said.
He had to face the men he’d known as boys and together confront Shanghai Bend. He didn’t think they could tell him much he didn’t know. There was construction on the riverbank and what? They dug up a body. It would take a long time to identify the remains, if that was possible, but let’s assume they already had an identification and homicide was indicated but the case was so old there were no suspects. There was an old military adage: Assume is a good way to make an ass out of u and me.
The freeway cut through a hillside that suddenly dropped away in a steep bluff above the town of Crockett. The taxi raced toward the double bridges over the Carquinez Strait, and Bobby could see the lights of the C&H sugar refinery and the dark, swift waters of the strait. In 1963 they’d passed under the bridges on their way up the river in Dean’s father’s boat. He hadn’t come back with the others. He’d walked away from the Feather River and hitchhiked to Oakland and the Armed Forces Induction Center.
“Turn around,” he said.
“Pardon me? I’m on the bridge.”
“When you get across the bridge, turn around and go back to San Francisco.”
“You’re a strange one, Mr. Passenger.”
“You can keep the four hundred,” he said. “I’ll take ‘strange’ as a compliment.”
13
The room was thick with smoke, the primal vapor of gambling. They were into the game now, concentrating on poker. On the stereo Stan Getz dissected the universe with a saxophone, adding his screed to the sounds of cards scraping on felt, chips clinking in the pot, and the crisp vernacular of the game. The hands were coming faster, the red and blue decks alternating with drill-team precision, and the bets were creeping up.
Around eleven-thirty Charlie won a small pot by catching aces up in seven stud that caused everyone to fold. On the next hand, playing draw, he opened with a large bet and bought the hand when nobody called.
“Winners again,” he snickered, gathering up the antes.
On the other side of Bobby’s empty chair, Dean’s eyes glistened, beady and ferocious. He threw in his cards with a snort of disgust, glaring at Charlie and mumbling, “You prick. Show your openers.”
Pleased with his modest winning streak, Charlie flipped over three sixes. “Good enough, tough guy?” he bleated. “No guts, no glory, Deano. You can’t win if you don’t stay in.”
“The poker gods shouldn’t favor puny wimps with lucky cards,” Dean declared.
“What’s the matter with you?” Alex asked sternly. “You’ve had a bug up your ass ever since you got here.”
Laughing, Dean started to sing, “Old lady river, that old lady river, she just keeps rollin’ along.”
“Quit yer yappin’,” Nelson snapped, dealing quickly. “Same game, jacks or better. Ante up.”
Alex thought playing with the boys from Noë Valley was better than not playing at all, but the game lacked the juice injected by the annual wild card. They knew each other too well to generate real excitement. Without a fifth player, the game had a desultory, unbalanced feel that wasn’t right. That was why they’d brought a wild card into the game in the first place. The wild card was noble prey, an intelligent victim, a stranger who had to be studied and understood before he could be manipulated, mind-fucked, and ultimately beaten. Poker was a contest of skill and guts and nerve, and that was the challenge Alex craved to satisfy his poker jones. Alas, since there was no wild card, he had to find another way to pump up the game.
The hand was dealt, the cards on the table. Alex let his cards lay on the felt as he watched Dean retrieve his, knowing the bickering had dropped the big man into a funk, priming him for exploitation. Dean moved the cards around in his hand in such a way that Alex knew he had three cards that went together, three cards to a straight or flush or perhaps three of a kind. Meanwhile, Nelson smiled and made pleasurable noises as though he had a good hand, indicating the opposite, and Charlie read his cards while silently moving his lips, saying “Queen” twice. Thinking this was the perfect time to bluff, Alex picked up his cards, glanced at them briefly, and put them back on the table as he always did in draw. He didn’t have to bluff. Nelson had dealt him four threes, in all likelihood the best hand he’d see all night.
“I open for three hundred,” he said, dropping three blues into the pot. “Charlie’s not gonna take another one without a fight.”
“I’ll see your three hundred,” Dean announced without hesitation, “and raise five hundred.”
That was it, Alex thought. You don’t raise that much on three cards to a flush or straight, but you do with three of a kind.
“Eight hundred to me,” Charlie said. “Um, um, um, okay.”
Alex winced, thinking playing with Charlie just wasn’t fair, but that was poker.
“I’m out,” Nelson said. “Too rich for me.”
“I’ll se
e your raise and raise another thousand,” Alex said mildly, staring at Dean and adding, “No guts, no glory.”
“Got another pat hand?” Dean inquired.
Alex cocked his head sideways, looked up at the light, and drummed his fingers on the felt. “Nope,” he said, lowering his eyes to face Dean. “Not this time.”
“I’ll call,” Dean announced, and tossed two bumblebees into the pot.
“You don’t want to raise again?”
“Go to hell, Wiz,” Dean said. “Charlie?”
Charlie waffled, shifting the cards around in his hand. “Shit, I dunno, I dunno. I’m out.”
“Okay,” Nelson said. “Dean and Alex. Cards, gentlemen.”
“I’m good,” Alex said. “No cards.”
“God damn,” Dean cursed. “You said you didn’t have a pat hand.”
“I lied. Poker is a ruthless game that rewards deception.”
“Christ—”
“Dean,” Nelson interrupted impatiently. “How many cards?”
“Two.”
Nelson peeled off two cards and passed them face down to Dean. “You opened, Alex,” he said. “It’s your bet.”
“I check.”
“You’re gonna sandbag,” Dean snarled. “Alex, you can’t raise if I don’t bet. I check, too. That’s it. Turn ’em over.”
Alex flipped over his cards, announcing each one. “One, two, three, four treys and the six of spades. It’s not a pat hand. I could’ve tossed the six.”
“Jesus H. Christ, four of a kind. I don’t know why I play this game with you.” Dean slammed his cards on the table, rattling chips. He stomped over to the stereo and jerked the needle off Stan Getz. “I can’t stand this screwball jazz,” he steamed. “I want shitkicker music. What d’ya got here, Charlie? Johnny Cash? The Orange Blossom Special? All right.”
“Let’s have some Elvis,” Charlie said. “Elvis was a shitkicker and proud of it.”
“Who cares about Elvis?” Dean mumbled. “He’s dead.”
“Everybody in that record pile is dead,” Nelson quipped and then added brightly, “Maybe we’re dead. Maybe that’s why we’re stuck in a time warp playing an antique game with no redeeming social value.”