I nod.
“Well, that’s over. She says I can’t be trusted. She says I’m a cheap bastard. She says I’m a liar.”
We are side by side, looking off in the same direction. If I glance to my right, I can see his profile. Watch his jaw muscles as he talks. His muscles don’t move much, which helps him in poker. U gives off no signs. No tells, as we call them. U is a stone face. All the good ones are like this. They’ve got a tough face to read. Me, I’m just lucky.
“What got to me,” he says, “is the lie part. Calling me a liar. I made a promise when I met her that I would not lie. I laid all my cards on the table. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is what you are going to have to deal with. She said, Okay, I can live with that.”
I chuckle. “But she couldn’t, right?”
“She couldn’t,” he says. “And somehow this is supposed to be my fault. So now she’s moving out. She’s taking all of her shit. All of the shit I bought her. I’m trying to talk to her, see if maybe we can work it out, but she gets this restraining order from the court telling me I’m not supposed to even be there, at my own house, when she packs up her shit. And probably some of my shit, too.”
“She would steal from you?”
“I don’t know,” U says. “No. I don’t think so. She’s not that kind of girl. This girl was solid, man.”
“She was pretty. You guys made a nice couple.”
“She says I’m sick.”
“We’re all sick.”
“She says I need help.”
“We all need help.”
“Not me.”
“Yes, you too, U. Even you, U.”
His cigarette is squeezed between his fingers. Suddenly he waves it in the air like a wand. “Not me,” U says, waving his magic cigarette. “I don’t buy into that crap. There’s no such thing as addiction.”
“There is addiction, my friend, and we are it. We’re like alcoholics. We’re like dope fiends. We’re like sex addicts. We get horny for the gamble.”
His magic wand waves. “There is no addiction. It’s all a lie made up by the tight-asses in our society and supported by a dangerous religious cult called Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous. Gamblers Anonymous. Bullshit. You gamble. You drink. You don’t want to gamble anymore? Then stop. You don’t want to drink anymore? Then stop. It’s not about 12 steps. It’s about willpower. It’s about free will. God can’t save you if you don’t want to be saved. Free will is a bitch. Deal with it.”
“It’s a sickness. I got that monkey on my back. I’m preaching the monkey’s gospel. I’m the devil’s evangelist. I’m sick, U. You too, U.”
I’m grinning.
U is not.
I’ve had this argument before with U. I love baiting U. Plus, it might help him get his mind off his girl.
Swelling up, U pushes that magic cigarette wand between his teeth and clenches hard, momentarily losing his stone face, grumbling, “No one says an athlete is addicted to the game! He throws all day and all night until he gets that curveball right. He does this for 25 or 30 years—even when there is no game. He does it so long and so hard, one arm grows longer than the other, but that’s not addiction. That’s called athletic perfection. Mastery of craft. He gets to go to the Hall of Fame. What it is, P, is your basic tight-asses don’t approve of gambling. Your basic tight-asses don’t approve of drinking. Your basic tight-asses don’t approve of dope smoking, so they call it a vice, a crime, a sin, and now a damn sickness. Is a baseball player addicted to baseball? Is a chess master addicted to chess?”
“That sounds fine and all, but I don’t know too many chess players with withdrawal symptoms when they can’t play chess. Sneaking out of the house to play chess?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, what is the point? A baseball player is losing his house because he throws too much? They tell him to stop throwing or he’s gonna lose his house? I’m not following this one, bro. I’m telling you, there’s a devil with a pitchfork behind it all, and on the other side is a loving God telling your ass to get out of the casino forever.”
“That’s just silly. Gambling is a game. A game. You want to stop, then stop. Keep me away from your goddamn 12 steps. Keep me away from your goddamn false religion.”
“I can’t seem to get past even the first step myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to. Just quit if you want to quit. Free will.”
“Is that right?” I say to him.
“That is right.”
“She ain’t coming back, is she?”
“Oh man! Shit, shit, shit.” Now he’s shaking his head. Looks like he’s fighting back tears, or maybe something stronger. Maybe I went too far. “Nah. Guess not. Nah, she ain’t coming back,” he says hoarsely. His cigarette has been smoked down to a stub. He takes one last drag, then flicks it to the ground and mashes out the glow with his spit-shined cowboy heel. The rain stops falling. He says in a stronger voice, “It’s just pussy, man.”
I tip my hat. “Yeah.”
He says to me, “What about that girl you were with?”
I don’t want to talk about C.L. Too hard. I say to U, “Are you in that tournament tonight?”
“Naw, I’m gonna play the tables. Make more money at the tables tonight.”
“I like the tournaments tonight.”
“I like the tables.”
“Just making money.”
“Just making money, baby,” U retorts with a dry laugh.
“You know it, brother,” I tell him, dry-laughing back.
U extends his hand. I slap him five. He slaps me five back and walks away. All in all, he’s a real cool white boy. A real cool gambler. A true professional. He’s all business again. There are no tells in his walk. From his walk, you wouldn’t know whether it was raining or the sun was shining. Whether it was Vegas or Miami. Whether it was the desert or the beach.
I can’t tell, good as I am.
THE MONKEY’S GOSPEL
59.
(It Is a Gun. It Is a Gun.)
There are only two kinds of gamblers: the lucky and the broke.
I am the lucky kind.
I own three homes, which I do not live in. I lease them out to movie stars. I own two cars—two very nice cars—both of which I drive.
Depending on what day of the month it is, I am invested in 50 to 100 businesses. I have stocks and bonds worth seven million dollars on today’s market. I also have, much to the dismay of my accountant, seven million dollars in cash in the bank, of all places. We have argued over this many times, but I like to have easy access to it, an easy access that I hope never to use. I just like to know that if I ever wanted to, I could cash a check for seven million dollars. My poor accountant. He worries about me.
Reckless. Wasteful. Bad money management, he calls it, but I know what he is really thinking: What if you get the itch again?
He sees how I live my life, he sees where I live, and he does not trust. He keeps waiting for the inevitable slide back. For me to cash the whole thing in and bet it all on black. There is always that possibility, I guess. You might say I’m sort of high risk.
I live in these casinos. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I live with a deck of cards in my pocket. But I do not gamble. When I am not downstairs watching the others, I play solitaire in my room. I play solitaire seven or eight hours a day. It helps. It scratches the itch.
I should be happy. I think I am. I am rich. I am near what I love. The monkey is off my back. What makes me happiest, though, is knowing that I have lost everything I own four or five times over and I still have all this. This is a lot. This didn’t used to be a lot. This used to be what you start with in order to get more.
Bet these little millions, bet these little chips, I would tell myself, and then you will be rich. That is how I used to think.
See, you get in this zone where you’re risking your entire net worth every day and every night and the rush is so incredible. These $100,000-ante games, with these ca
ptains of industry and famous athletes, these money men, these really rich guys, these whales, this pot with two million in it, and you raise it four million, and these big shots fold their cards—these really big shots fold—and you rake in another couple million. They deal you another hand, and you look in the hole, and I’ll be damned if it’s not aces again. But something goes wrong this time—or maybe it goes right.
You say, Aces, aha, I can win another big pot. I can be rich. I can bet everything I’m worth on this hand and be rich. And you look down at your chips—you’ve got like 10 million dollars in chips sitting in front of you. You multiply that by the number of big shots sitting at the table who you figure will call the hand—they call every hand, these three chasers. One of them, the Chinese guy, he owns all the shoelace factories in Taiwan. He’s always joking, If I lose 10 or 20 million dollars while I’m here in Vegas, no problem. I just go back home and raise the worldwide price of shoelaces by a penny, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
It’s kind of funny. It’s kind of not. He’s got money to throw away, he’s a whale, he’s a whale so big he makes you look like a guppy—but you’ve got aces. You can clean him out. You can send him back to Taiwan cleaned out. Raise the price of shoelaces worldwide, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Then you will be worth … but you are already worth … There’s 10 million in chips sitting in front of you!
This is when you say to yourself, But it’s only luck. You are not magic. You are not special. You have no great skill. It’s only luck. Ten million is ten million. Ten million is a lot. Ten million is too much and aces can be beat. You know from personal experience that aces get beat all the time. If he beats these aces, he takes your 10 million, and the price of shoelaces won’t be affected at all.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
But you will go back to driving a bus.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
This is when you freak.
Simply put, you freak out. You’ve got aces and you freak out. You lay your cards down. You fold your aces. You are freaking out.
You watch the rest of the hand play out. The three chasers are in it to the end. The Chinese guy from Taiwan wins the pot. A big pot.
You know how much it had in it? Twenty million dollars.
You know what he won it with? Two jacks.
You would have killed him. You would have cleaned him out. What the hell did you fold your aces for? They were aces!
You rack up your chips and cash out. You leave the table. You go upstairs and lie on your bed. You are alone. You hear a heart pounding fast. You hear sobbing. You reach for the phone and dial the one that you love, and you tell her, I just blew 20 million dollars.
She says, You lost 20 million dollars?
You say, No. I blew it. I folded. I should have stayed in the hand. I would have won.
She says, So why did you fold?
You say, Because …
She says, Because what?
Because … I don’t know.
You don’t know?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
And she says, Maybe you should find a new line of work.
You don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know. So all week you are grieving. The monkey is preaching his obscene gospel. All week you’re losing like crazy. It’s seven days before you win another hand. The money is going away. You’re too ashamed to count how much per day. So you stop for a test. A teensy-weensy little test. Just to see what it feels like to spend a month at the beach doing nothing.
Suddenly, it’s like a weight lifted off your shoulders.
Well, not suddenly, because the first few days are hard. The nights harder. It helps if there is a woman there with you, and there always is because you have plenty of money to flash. This pretty island girl, she strokes your ego in a way that almost fills the void. And you think, Here, now. There is this. This is nice. Maybe not as good as gambling, but nice.
A month later you go to your money, and it has grown. That is the day you realize that you are rich. You have had millions of dollars before this, but this is the first day you realize that you are truly rich.
You are at a beach on an island. You are the rich guy. All the girls are after you. You let them catch you. This feels sort of good. You go to your bank account, and again it has grown, and you think, Did I really lose three million dollars in one night?
It is a crazy idea: If you leave your money alone, it will be there for you the next day. If you do not gamble … shit, your bills are too small to eat through this mint, so where is the money going to go?
The monkey interjects a cynical thought: What good is having all that money if you don’t use it?
You tell the monkey to screw off. Beat it!
He digs his claws in deep, so deep you can’t breathe, and you are pleading, pleading, Leave me alone, please, please, please leave me alone, oh my God, don’t kill me, you’re killing me, monkey—and you grab that pretty island girl and you fuck her and you fuck her until she swears you love her. Then you fuck her sister, too.
You end your vacation. You go back home to Vegas, but you continue the test. You play your solitaire. You live in your casino. You chase your pretty girls. You do not gamble. It is hard, but you do not gamble. The desire is still there. So is your money, and it is growing—larger now than even your desire.
You think: So that’s what banks do, they pay you to hold your money. What a concept. Did I really lose three million dollars in one night? What was I thinking? Oh my God.
The monkey says, You also won 10 million dollars in one night, don’t forget.
But you are learning to ignore the monkey, who does not have one single original thought in his head.
Then you see someone hit a jackpot, and the monkey digs back in deep. The itch wants to be scratched. So you scratch. You and that woman, what was her name? Now, she was a degenerate. You scratch that itch, man. You scratch. Half a million dollars in 12 hours. Every penny of it feels like blood. The monkey is humming sweet songs. He is happy to be back. And that woman, what was her name? She wants to keep going, she says she has a hunch about the end machine—so you let her keep going. A hundred dollars a pop. Then four machines at a time—her purse on one, her drink on another, her cigarettes on another, her lighter on the lucky end machine. Four hundred dollars a pop. Another two hundred thousand down. The jackpot goes off, finally, and damn if she doesn’t win it. Eight hundred thousand dollars! And she’s hugging you and squeezing you and then (upstairs) blowing you (ping! ping!), and you’re thinking, But didn’t we pump $700,000 into those things? That’s only $100,000 net profit. Didn’t I earn more than that in interest while chilling down on that island with that girl?
Good questions. Good questions all. Monkey, any thoughts?
So you play your solitaire while that woman (what was her name? what was her husband’s name?) takes her winnings back downstairs to the machines, and you plan another test: If she wins again, then you will gamble, but if she comes back up here a week from now asking for money—
Of course, in a week she has given it all back.
All of it.
Less than a week.
Eight hundred thousand dollars.
You say, Amazing.
The monkey says, But that’s not the point—she’s a degenerate. It won’t happen to you, I promise.
And she says, Can I have some more money?
You give her $1,000, this woman who is now used to playing it $400 a pop, and she slaps you, shrieking, This is all you give me?
It gets so bad, you have to call security to your room.
Amazing, you say.
The test continues. And the itch. And the solitaire. A daily diet of solitaire. God, do you need your solitaire.
You go three months without gambling, without thinking about your bank account, but when you finally check it, the money has grown some more.
You figure it in your head: The interest is more than a year’s worth of really big jackpots. And you do not
smell like smoke. Your eyes are not heavy with sleep. Your bills are paid.
But that girl (S, her name was S), she comes back to you. She says that she is leaving her husband, her children, for you. She says that she loves only you. But you know better. You say to her, No one is putting a gun to your head. You don’t have to keep playing. You can quit. Your life will improve. Believe me, I know. She says, But I can’t. You say, Nobody has a gun to your head. She says, It is a gun. It is a gun. It is right here against my head. You say, You got that monkey on your back, is what. You’re preaching the monkey’s gospel. She says, Man, this is so much bullshit. I want to be with you, don’t you fucking understand? You tell her, But I have someone already. She says, No you don’t, you degenerate. Stop fucking with my head, okay? You don’t have anybody. Everybody knows that. You tell her, I have somebody, I really do, somebody who I love. Somebody whose love is strong enough to make me see that there is no gun to my head. Somebody whose love is bigger than this thing. Somebody whose love I miss. She says, Not me. No way. I don’t love anybody that much. Shit. I just want to gamble. You tell her, Thank you for being honest at least. Then you open your safe and your heart and give her a hundred thousand. She takes it like she’s in a hurry. She forgets to kiss you. A hundred thousand. No kiss. You call the one whose love has saved you.
You tell her, I love you. I want you back. I’m not that man anymore. I beat it. I finally got that monkey off my back. I want to come home.
You hear the tears in her voice when the one you love tells you, There’s no home here for you to come home to. I’ve found somebody else.
She hangs up without waiting to hear what you will say.
You can’t believe it. You simply can’t believe it’s been that long. Four and a half years have passed since you’ve lived at home. Six months since you’ve visited.
Too late.
You call the other one, the one who had it so bad you had to let her go, had to kick her to the curb for her own good. You tell her you are desperately lonely. You tell her you are thinking dark thoughts. You tell her about the monkey. You tell her you think you want to die. C.L. tells you, Send me the money. I’ll be there on the next plane.
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