The professor, who is not a religious man, utters an earnest prayer for P as he replaces his phone in his pocket. Then he changes his numbers on the screen and begins to press PLAY again. Ping-ping.
68.
Not a day went by that Missy did not think of her black man.
With each glance back, he grew wiser, nobler, more handsome. The con had become in her mind less a con and more a grand gesture. He had saved her. He had turned her life around. It was only in retrospect that she could admit that she had come perilously close to ruining her career (so many missed days, so many missed deadlines) and losing her family (the fifteen-year-old was sexually active, the thirteen-year-old had been experimenting with marijuana and satanic body art). And her finances—how could a professional woman who made so much have so little? She was maxed out on everything, she owed everybody, and when she got brave and tallied all the receipts, earnestly, she discovered that she had blown close to $200,000 in her year and a half of soothing, relaxing, stress-relieving gambling at the sweet, innocent, harmless low-stakes Indian casinos of South Florida. She had been blowing money at a rate of a little over $10,000 a month. She couldn’t believe it. No wonder the $10,000 jackpot that she had gotten so exited about didn’t last more than 30 days. No wonder she didn’t have a pot to piss in despite her six-figure salary. So that was addiction and she hadn’t even noticed.
Now she was addicted to the memory of the man who had saved her. (She was not in love with him, per se. She was seeing her personal trainer again, seeing him in more than one sense of the word this time, Ricardo, with his Latin complexion and his addiction to setting goals both in bed and out. She had lost 20 pounds so far.) The gambler who had saved her, she cherished the feel of him that she carried in her heart. It colored everything.
Of late, she had begun researching gambling and addiction.
She had put out a call for manuscripts and had persuaded her bosses to devote the house’s resources to no fewer than three projects on gambling next season: a coffee table book on casinos, a how-to guide for beginning poker players, and a fictional book whose protagonist was a gambler, though she had not found an author or an outline for that one yet.
She had researched the man himself and come up with very little. Many of the gamblers she interviewed knew of P, the bus driver, the man in the black cowboy hat, and they all had stories to tell—oh, what stories they told—but as far as printed material was concerned, she had unearthed a mere half dozen photographs from his days as a professional in Las Vegas and an interview he had done for the online magazine TheGambleToday.com during the finals of the World Championship of Poker a few years back.
Three months later, on the morning of December 5, Missy’s final red-lining of a manuscript was interrupted by a buzz from her secretary. It was a bicycle messenger with a letter. It was from him:
Missy, you said you wanted to know who I was and my friends tell me you have been asking around about me. Here is your opportunity. Take this key to ___’s Storage. There you shall find all you need to know about P. You are beautiful. I enjoyed our time together. I am happy that I don’t see you around the casinos anymore. That is the best sign of all. Be strong. Be strong every day and night for the rest of your life. Never let your guard down. It will call you again. I will call you nevermore. P.
69.
When she got to ___’s Storage, she went to unit 323, which was one of the closet-sized ones. She found inside four lawn bags filled with ATM receipts; an envelope with a handful of old lottery tickets in it, Play-4 tickets, all of them with the same number, 7-9-7-9; a handwritten note; a handwritten manuscript in a shoebox; a note card of lucky numbers; and a black cowboy hat. His cowboy hat. She read the handwritten note:
By the time you read this I will be dead. There are two things you need to know about me from when we met in September. First, I was down to my last couple million. That may sound like a lot to you. It is not to a man who has had a hundred times that much pass through his hands. Second, you are a most attractive woman, though I approached you not because of your beauty, but because I found out through friends that you were an editor and thought that one day I might need someone like you to handle my story, which you shall find in the box. This is not to say that our encounter was a plot, or a ruse, for there is not a day that has passed that I have not thought of you. It is simply that I wanted this business to be handled by someone who had experienced me firsthand. Outsiders do not understand us. They would hold up my manuscript for its prurience, or they would use it to sermonize, or they would make of it a tragedy. Addiction is not a tragedy; it is a love story with abuse in it. We love, and it abuses us. I was rescued from it for a while, for 564 days, but in the end I reverted to type and started making trips back to Vegas. I wanted to get back some of what I had lost. Mostly, I wanted to hear the ping-ping. I wanted to breathe. You know how it is. The final three months of my life was an unending string of abuse by it upon my person. How do you say unbelievable bad luck? You know what I’m talking about. You have been there.
As to my death, I shall be brief. After we met, the itch hit me hard. I went to my son’s game. I went to my final GA meeting. I went back to Vegas. I stayed too long. Less than a week ago, when I blew the final penny of my money, I came back to Miami and sought out my son, who is in his first year at the University of Miami. In a saner frame of mind, I had given him a sum, half a million, to hold for just in case. I demanded it. He refused, seeing the state that I was in. We argued. I had a gun. He will live, I have learned, but his career as an athlete is over. Seeing him like that, I sank into my deepest depression. I still had the gun. The rest you can figure out.
Please do not include the tragedy in the book. I want it to end on a happy note, though I do not know how that will be possible. Perhaps you can end it on that night in Vegas when I slept with my wife. That was a happy note. I recall that I was happy. See to it that the proceeds, if there are any, go to my ex-wife, my children, and the friends listed herein. I beg of you not to reveal my name and embarrass anyone that I have met in this wretched happy life I have lived.
Oh, Missy, I am sad, so sad. I have never felt this low in my life. And so tired. I am tired of being tired. I’m tired of feeling like I’m running up a steep hill with lead in my shoes and a big old heifer on my back. I am looking forward to not being tired. I just feel as though I’ve lived my entire life running and hiding like some criminal. I’m tired of lying. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of it all. I’m tired of feeling what I’m feeling right now. I want to gamble. In prison there are no casinos. I can’t live like that, Missy. I refuse to live like that. P.
70.
(P’s Lucky Numbers)
123
323
262
232
626
646
464
797
979
585
858
989
898
373
737
621
261
908
Fantasy 5: 12, 13, 23, 26, 29 (backup combos: switch out each number with 1 and then 11). Lotto: 23, 26, 32, 37, 41, 46 (backup combos: switch out the 41 with 1, 13, 17, 19, and 21).
71.
(She found it scrawled on the back of the card, barely legible.)
the fifth definition of insanity: we pass it on to our children and they accept it without question—this is how we hurt them, this is how we destroy the future P
(She found an ATM receipt with some kind of poem scribbled on it in pencil,)
A Poem for P
There is only one man I love
And it is you
On the weekends when you don’t drive me
I am blue …
(and she flipped through the manuscript pages to get a feel for his voice.)
… now, as far as religion is concerned, I am not the most religious guy in the world. I was raised in a Christian home, so that’s where
my head’s at for all intents and purposes. The thing is, well, I’m no philosopher, I’m a school bus driver, but from my way of looking at it, a long, long time ago you got these desert people with their turbans and their camels and some of them are shepherds with no sense of how the world really works, no concept of science—and we get our information about God and the creation of the world from them?
On the other hand, when I’m in a tough spot, I pray. There are no atheists in a casino. I pray, I pray my butt off—and something usually happens and I’m out of the tough spot.
I’m all-in, Lord. The only card that can help me is the nine of clubs, Lord.
And blam! There’s the nine of clubs.
Now, what does all that mean? Did God give me the winning card? Is God a gambler? Does God have a monkey on his back, too? Does the monkey preach the gospel? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, I was sitting in seat number three when this Omar Sharif– looking Middle Eastern dealer hit me with that first royal flush.
I took note of that.
My second royal, this was a few weeks later, I was sitting in seat three again. The guy gave me four face-card hearts, minus the jack. I’m thinking, Can lightning strike twice? What are you saying to me, Lord? A royal flush is the rarest of all hands. The odds are something like 280,000 to 1. Sure enough, the dealer popped me the jack of hearts. Another royal. This time the Indians were giving away $1,199 for each royal. So I tipped the dealer $100 and gave everyone else a 20.
I started to like seat three. I started doing things to get it, like coming to tournaments early. Paying other players a few bucks to swap with me. They started calling me Seat Three. It got to the point where I’d skip a tournament sometimes if I couldn’t get my beloved seat three. But I’m a different kind of true believer. My religion is gambling. I got to play, I got to play, I got to play, Amen, so give me a seat. Any seat. I’m in church, y’all.
There is power, power,
Wonder working power,
In the cards,
(in the cards!)
In my hand,
(in my hand!)
There is power, power,
Wonder working power,
In the precious cards in my hand.
So then I hit again, in seat seven this time, and of course seat seven in a nine-handed game is three seats away from the dealer. So now I’m thinking, That’s the answer. The Lord is telling me I have to be three seats away from the dealer to get these royals. So now I can sit in seat three or seven. That opened up more playing opportunities for me. I skipped fewer tournaments.
I went to the other casino down in the swamp to spend a romantic weekend there with my wife. The first night I was there, I told the dealer, “I’m in my lucky seat, bro. Seat three. This is my royal flush seat. Deal me that royal. Thus sayeth the Lord.”
He laughed and dealt me a royal flush on the next hand. Everyone was amazed. This time the jackpot was up to $2,500. So I tipped the dealer $250 and gave everyone else $25. Nice.
My biggest royal, however, was not in seat three.
There was this time I was in a tournament and I couldn’t manage to get seat three. Back then you had to pay an extra three bucks if you wanted to try for the royal during the tournament. If you didn’t pay the three bucks and a royal was dealt to you, you got nothing, just the pot and a baseball cap with the casino’s name on it. Since I had been unable to get my beloved seat three, I decided not to pay the three bucks. On the second hand, I’m dealt four face-card diamonds. The jackpot was up to $14,222. I said to the dealer, “Whatever you do, don’t break my heart. Don’t deal me the 10 of diamonds. I didn’t pay the three bucks for the royal.” The kid smiled and proceeded to deal me a 10 of diamonds. I sat there crying at the poker table so hard they had to interrupt the tournament to straighten me out. Everybody was sad for me. When the pit boss came around and gave me my prize, the stinking baseball cap, I begged him with the tears still in my eyes to accept the three bucks late. Please. Please. He informed me sadly, “Rules is rules.”
Is there a God? Is there a God who would allow a thing like that? What kind of rules are those? Is there someone up there working against us? A real gambler, no matter how lucky he is, has no luck at all. Everything in this world is fixed against him.
One day, I found myself in seat 10. I hate seat 10. You’re right next to the dealer. Some of them smell bad. They work all night or all day some of them. This guy, thank God, smelled nice. He was one of my favorite dealers. He was good-natured and he controlled the action at the table with a firm but fair hand, which is all you can ask of a dealer. As he dealt he was making these self-deprecating jokes about how he hadn’t dealt a royal in like over a year. The jackpot was up to $6,998. I looked down and saw that I had four face-card diamonds. I said to the friendly dealer, “Just give me the king of diamonds and you’re gonna have six hundred bucks in your hand.” He dealt me the king of diamonds on the last card. I fell out of my chair. It was crazy. I tipped the guy the six hundred. I gave everyone at the table fifty. It was a good morning for me.
I don’t worry about seat three or seat seven anymore. Superstitions are crazy. Imagine if I had fought for seat three that day. Imagine if I had been the other kind of true believer. I don’t even want to think about it. Thank God I’m not a zealot.
(She set the manuscript down, and then she wept.)
72.
(He Paid His Tithes)
Missy attended his funeral, which was held on a Saturday in a mid-sized Baptist church in the north end of Miami. It was a closed-casket affair as are most suicides of this sort in which the head is deformed by the entry and exit wounds. Mounted on the coffin was an oversized photograph of him. He was smiling. He was wearing his black cowboy hat. There were many wreaths of flowers layered upon each other in a brightly colored heap of fragrance and petals. The officiating minister gave a surprisingly robust, cheerful eulogy for P, which was well-received by all in attendance—but that of course was the problem. His ex-wife was not there, nor was the son whom P had assaulted. Missy found out from one of P’s sisters that the boy had recovered enough to have attended but had decided not to. Also missing was one of the other two sons, the middle boy. Thus, P’s nearest kin at the funeral were his sisters, his daughter, and the eldest of his remaining sons, a sleepy-eyed man in his early 20s who bore a striking resemblance to him. A highlight of the ceremony was the tearful solo singing of a hymn, “When My Heart Is Overwhelmed, Lead Me to the Rock That Is Higher Than I,” by a chubby, somber woman who later introduced herself to Missy as P’s girlfriend. There were several such women who introduced themselves thus, or as his exes. Missy realized, with a smirk, that she could have included herself in this group.
The officiating minister set the crowd to chanting Amen when he said, “There was none more generous than P. He gave with his heart and he never asked for it back. He was what he was and he lived what he lived. His life was a blessing to us all. He showered us with blessings. He paid his tithes.” The minister never once mentioned anything remotely close to the word gambler in his eulogy. Missy was aware that many in the large crowd at the funeral were gamblers. They sure looked like gamblers. They were a shady bunch. Many of them were tattooed.
The interment was held at a graveyard a few miles away from the church. It took the long chain of cars a full half hour to snake its way into the cemetery. At the graveside, P’s daughter, listed in the obituary as Dr. _______, a pediatrician, collapsed and began to wail, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, oh Daddy.” The tall, handsome man, her husband, helped her back to her feet. Missy noted that the toddler clutching the daughter’s hand, P’s grandson, was listed in the obituary as P _______ III, and she was suddenly overcome with sadness.
73.
After the ceremony, Missy found that the gamblers, especially those who stood to benefit from the book, were eager to talk to her once she had explained who she was and her purpose for being there.
A dapper, well-dressed gambler introduced himself as Pro
fessor _____ and began to speak: “He died virtually penniless and yet he left me five grand to help me out. What a guy. He didn’t have to do that, but that’s the way he was. I’ll tell you one thing, he didn’t mean to shoot his boy. This thing makes you crazy. What a tragedy, what a tragedy. See, if it actually paid off the way it should, most of us here would be doing all right. We are good at it, we know all the angles, we play it right, but it is fixed against us. The problem is that these machines down here are not slot machines. These machines down here are video pull-tabs, which means that no matter how much you play them, the chances are pretty good that you are not going to win. You know why? A pull-tab is a scratch-off. Thus, a video pull-tab is a video scratch-off. That means, just like in the scratch-off games you buy in the grocery stores, the winner is already predetermined. So let’s say that you live in Miami, but the winning ticket has been printed in Orlando. Well, you can buy as many scratch-off tickets as you want, there is no way for you to win because the winning ticket is not even in your city …” The professor went on long after Missy had lost interest and stopped taking notes.
Missy was surprised to bump into the former number-three NFL draft choice O.C. in attendance at P’s funeral. “His death is typical,” explained O.C. “It should be a warning to everyone who thinks that this thing is innocent. I’ve seen guys richer than him lose it all. The rich ones are the hardest to convince. They think that there is no way that they can lose all that—they’ve got millions. It happens and then they do this. The thing with P is, he fooled us. A guy hits rock bottom you can help him. There was no way to help P, but we didn’t know that.
He had us fooled. That’s what made him different from the rest of us all along. What I’m saying is, P never hit rock bottom. He got close, but he never hit it. You hit rock bottom, you can be helped. Every time he got close, he would win again, so he couldn’t be helped. He had too much luck—the lucky ones are just as hard as the rich ones to convince. The twelve steps are useless to them. P probably wasn’t even listening to us. This time his luck ran out. He hit rock bottom for real and see what happened? He learned his lesson, tragically. It’s very sad, but typical.”
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