by Kendric Neal
No sleep came that night. Not a stolen thirty minutes here or there, he didn't sleep at all and he knew it. Yet he got up with the same energy as usual, or if anything, a little more. An anxiety buzz would do that for you, he thought. Witnessing death would do that. It's the ultimate adrenaline shot, surviving a day others didn't. He turned on the coffee, and wandered out to the driveway to get the paper. He'd grappled with insomnia since the Losing Streak from Hell, he had the paper boy's schedule down now. 4:50 to 5:12, right as rain, the kid was reliable, he deserved his holiday bonus. Once again Neely marveled at the behemoth parked in his driveway, somehow in the morning light looking even bigger. It reminded him of something out of Jurassic World, mud and blood dripping off its hungry jowls. It was sleeping now, snoring loudly, and without thinking he tiptoed past, not wanting to take any chances.
It was still dark out so he had to turn up the dimmer on the chandelier. Front page, bottom half, Four Killed in Logging Accident. It didn't mention him, that was good. He didn't need strangers and every guy who remembered him from high school calling him to ask what it felt like, to ask if he'd seen their faces. Of course it also didn't mention the old woman, did it? Not the tree, not the shrine, not the curse, just a clinical account of what they made sound like equipment failure. Sure, blame the equipment. It can't fight back.
He went to work like a zombie. It wasn't even the lack of sleep, it was the dread that paralyzed every good emotion, every shred of thankfulness or joy, and he thought perhaps this was what true depression felt like. He felt a new understanding of the affliction, something he'd only thought he understood before, but now felt so deeply he'd never again pass off anyone's dark mood the same way again. If his life were like this every day he'd end it, sure and simple. He felt such a bleak cloud above his head it was as though he couldn't even imagine light penetrating it again. The Jepp account, who cared? The losing streak, the winning, none of it mattered now. All he could do was put one foot in front of the other and soldier on, people were watching, things were expected of him, he had to perform. He wanted nothing more than to go home and sit in front of the TV and watch something mindless while this thing tightened its death grip on him: soap operas, game shows, he didn't care, just as long as it danced and sang and kept him from seeing that tree that was coming for him in the slow, patient way of all truly evil things.
Hope was home though and he knew he'd get no respite in her presence, so he abandoned the thought of using some sick time. The casino, his long-trusted second refuge, was sure as hell not an option, and everything else he thought of only depressed him further. He did the next best thing he could, he shut the door to his office and pulled up his Schwab—he was forgetting to do that every day, something he used to look forward to and now forgot on a regular basis. Up. He was up.
Neely sat back, putting his hands behind his head. Was this the lesson? To rob him of his joy and passion, paint it with a blood-red brush and stick him down a hole with only his worst fears to keep him company? Why? Why not just smoosh him under a tree like the loggers? How was he any different than them? Was he any more or less responsible? If this woman had the power to mete out justice, what led her to choose this? If this was his, it was lined with mink compared to what befell the greedy, lying, ex-con logger badasses, thumbing their noses at nature and killing 500-year-old trees for beer and cig money. Neely closed out his screen, shut down his Schwab (he was actually getting sick of green ink), turned it all off and left the office. No one saw him go, which was what he'd hoped, though he wouldn't have said goodbye anyway. He had to know something. He had to know how far it went. He had to stop licking his bleeding gums, it was time to bite down and bite hard.
“I don't understand. Where are you going?” she said.
“I don't know yet,” he lied.
“How can you not know where you're going?”
“None of us knows where we're going.”
He knew that'd piss her off. “Neely. What is this? Tell me.”
He almost answered as the question brought up a white hot rage he hadn't known was there. He was sowing what he'd reaped, a practical man married to a practical woman, but the wheels had slipped, he'd jumped the track and was in the wilderness now. Her insane practicality made him want to frigging murder her and he had to suppress the desire to tell her so. “I already told you. I need to get away, I need a few days.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Well, that's just not good enough.”
“It doesn't have to be good enough, Hope.”
He only used her name when he was mad. She knew it but they'd moved beyond that now. She wasn't someone who could just leave things to chance, maybe it's why she hated gambling so much, maybe it's why he loved it. “Is it another woman?”
“Is it WHAT?!”
He didn't have to see her to know she was biting her lip in anger. “You heard me.“
“Don't be an ass.”
“Don't talk to me like that.”
“Don't be an ass and I won't.”
She almost hung up. He knew that too, and in a moment of pique, he wished she had. It would give him license to do what he wanted, he wouldn't have to explain, he wouldn't have to call, he wouldn't have to return her texts. Not until he was done. Not until he knew. She didn't hang up though, she held on and the silence was dead, ugly, impossibly final…“I don't understand why you can't tell me.”
Sure as shit, she didn't understand. She'd forbidden him to tell her. She'd made it clear she had zero tolerance for gambling, what choice did he have? She'd put him in this position and now she didn't like it. Well, tough titties, baby. Time to grow a pair. “I've got to go, Hope. That's my plane.”
“Your plane?” he heard her say as he hung up. Okay, she'd sweat for a while. She'd sweat. A wave of cruelty made him glad, let her suffer a little while like he'd been suffering. You should have seen this coming, Hope. You should have stopped me.
He boarded with no luggage, but that wasn't unusual. No one paid it much mind on flights to Vegas.
CHAPTER 10
By the time he saw the lights down below, two martinis had done half the job and the desert had done the rest. Las Vegas had always had a special allure for him. The true genius of it, he thought, was putting it out where there was no reason for a city to exist. No port or harbor, no views, no natural beauty, there was nothing to this stinking piece of desert except Vegas. A city wanting to achieve legendary status should be like that, in a place no one would stumble across, like those infamous hole-in-the-wall hideouts in the Old West. Bugsy Siegel may never be celebrated in the pantheon of American business visionaries, but his stamp was just as indelible.
Few people were completely free from Vegas' sexy allure, but for someone like Neely who felt a thrill of excitement just walking by a gaming table, it was a pure adrenaline rush. He barely slept when he was there, so wired knowing what was waiting for him, legs spread, arms open, ready to be ridden and ridden hard.
The Mirage…he thought, how apropos, passing the luxury resort in his cab, the whole damn place was a mirage. The beauty of the Paris cityscape, the grandness of Rome at Caesar's, the fantasy of Excalibur, the buzz of New York, New York…all built out of sand—real but unreal, reflections of infinity, smoke and mirrors, beautiful shimmering illusions. He was a serious gambler, he was supposed to be immune to this, but he felt the hunger rise inside him. Everything fell away in this adult Fantasyland—Hope, the kids, the job, the accident, and mercifully, the old woman.
He wanted to savor what was coming so he went straight to the bar, ordered another Grey Goose martini and sat back sipping it in sweet anticipation. At Naccahaw, the poker table was only reliable in the evenings and on weekends, and the mix was strange sometimes even then. He found he didn't do well when they were all bad players, it somehow threw off the rhythm of the game. Everything became random, unpredictable. He'd lose hands he thought he'd win and vice versa, and that created too much uncertainty. H
e'd wait until he saw stronger players sit in, that was when it got interesting. He'd gotten to know most of them by sight, enough to share a nodding acquaintance, but he resisted overtures of friendship. To him, these relationships were professional. He didn't want his judgment impaired by learning the guy's wife was cheating on him or he owed the IRS money. He would nod to the other players, they would nod to him. They were the lions, they shared in the spoils. The others at the table, the occasionals, the tourists, the new faces, they were the prey. The vets only competed to see who could take more of their money, nothing else was in doubt. It was professional courtesy among sharks before feeding on a dolphin. You want a fin? I wanted the fin. Okay, you take the fin, I'll take the belly. We'll split the shoulder. Done.
It was different in Vegas though. There were more like him, a lot more, and he often killed time simply watching, waiting for the right grouping to appear, only sometimes it never did and he went up to his room disappointed. Tonight he got lucky, he liked the look of the crowd gathering at Table 3 and there was one seat available. He'd developed a pretty good sense of how to tell who the good players were, but there were always surprises. Tonight was no different. The middle-aged Asian woman at the far end was the dominant player. She wasn't expensively dressed, she didn't speak English or talk or even look at the other players, she just played. Neely came to know when she had something, though, and gave her a wide berth in the game. It was a pleasure to watch and her chips multiplied slowly but steadily. He knew he wasn't going to make much headway with her at the table, so he went to play Blackjack for a while. He sat at a $500 table, something he'd never done before. He hadn't forgotten his true purpose in coming and he thought he'd test his luck early to see if it was still there. He had his gains of the week to play with, losing them wouldn't change much. He hadn't bothered with a player's card and didn't feel like taking the time to register now, so he put down the $5200 in cash he was carrying. That was ten hands at best, but that would prove what he needed to know.
He was down $2000 in what seemed like less than a minute. The dealer drew an 18, a 19, a 20 and another 20. Neely went bust in three cards all four times. On the fifth, the dealer drew a 13 and Neely two Queens. Finally, it seemed, a break, and he chose not to split just to get one in the can, but the dealer drew an 8 and won. He should have split, he would have had that 8. Don't change your game out of caution now, he told himself. Don't play not to lose. He took his own advice and lost spectacularly the next four hands and was down to his tenth and final. Neely drew a King and a 7, the dealer drew 16. Neely watched the dealer draw a Jack as the odds finally caught up with him. Okay, better. The other players, who'd fared as poorly as Neely, all cheered and the dealer smiled. Neely ordered another drink and followed his instinct—never walk away from a table once it felt comfortable.
He didn't quit til the dealer's shift changed two hours later. He was up $69,000. Other players had come and gone, most of them doing no better than breaking even. It wasn't enough of a streak to draw a crowd, not in Vegas, but he'd noticed a few eyes on him. A few were curious, a few were hungry. Money did that, luck did it more. Everyone's hungry for luck. Neely asked for a voucher, he didn't want to walk away with that much on him, and an attendant came over to sign him up for a card. He checked out the poker table; it looked like a good crowd finally, but all the seats were taken. He decided to check in to the hotel, maybe get a bite, then come back and get serious. He was pleasantly surprised when they comped him a luxury suite, he'd never been enough of a high-roller for that. It was on the 52nd floor and had a real bar, jacuzzi and 70” TV. He sat and sipped a Coke, flashing through sports and stocks tickers. He turned the TV off and sat lit by the screen's ghost image, reflecting the Vegas skyline outside. Calm before the storm, he thought. Quiet before the battle…the theme from Patton played in his head as he pictured forces gathering on a hill, the pipers playing a march, soldiers and horses restless for action as dawn crept over the horizon. He'd thought before how gambling did something for him he'd never heard anyone else talk about—it brought back imagination. It brought back joy. The kind of joy only kids know. He'd always thought of himself as creative, after all, his approach to Mortal Kombat II had bordered on the heretical and in some circles (deep in the valleys of geekdom), he'd achieved elevated status as a visionary. Programming as well, at least in those heady early days, seemed liked crazed fun and so off-the-box it was subversive. But that's not where the money was, was it? Creators, Practitioners and Thieves, that's what the article said…something he was thumbing through at his dentist's office, waiting for a cleaning. The three ways to make a living, the three philosophies of adulthood. Creators and Thieves got all the press, but Practitioners ran the world. Maybe that's one of the reasons he felt an increasing pull to gambling as his career had matured, as there was precious little in his day-to-day work these days that seemed genuinely creative. Maybe that explained why he connected Vegas to imagination and dreams—maybe that's something he sorely missed. But did bucking the odds at Hold'Em really compare to his crazily unexpected “Toasty Incinerate” move at Mortal Kombat II that left Marshall Matzenhahl bloody, broken and defeated and won Neely a drool-worthy, brand-spanking-new Apple Newton? Or was gambling really just a bunch of damn Thieves in disguise?
He walked downstairs and passed the poker tables set back in a mirrored corner of the room. He saw one that looked like a good crowd, two actually, but he had the feeling that once he sat down he wouldn't be getting up, so he decided not to commit yet. He checked out the sports book, quiet on a Friday night but he knew what it would be like by early Sunday morning. He'd wait til early Sunday and brave the crowds at the windows, though—always good to see which players got arrested Saturday night before betting on the Sunday line-up. Could be a game-changer.
He stopped at roulette. It had never really been his game, but it had a certain nostalgia. His best friend down the street when he was growing up, Gary Penn, had had a toy roulette set and they used to play when he slept over. As they got older, they'd even forego the Lego and Transformers and Nintendo to play it for real, using pennies and nickels and dimes to make it more interesting. Everyone remembers their first, right? Was it true of every vice as well? Their first drink, their first line of coke, their first blast of heroin? That feeling that they'd found the place where they belonged, where they'd found home? Neely remembered those nights at Gary's house, Freddie Krueger stalking some poor kid on the TV while they spun the wheel, going up a buck or down two with the winds of fate. Neely sometimes had to shake Gary awake to keep going. Gary would finally fade on a ten-count while Neely played on his own, spun, placed bets, spun again, adrenaline pumping too much to quit. Neely wondered where Gary was now, he was pretty sure it wasn't Vegas. He'd never had the bug. Neely hoped he'd found some other vice to keep him company. Everyone needed one and Neely felt sorry for people who never found theirs.
“$40,000 please.”
A couple of players looked up at him. Roulette didn't offer great odds—the people who played it were tourists, amateurs, and maybe every once in a while, someone like him who played for nostalgia. But they generally didn't sit down with $40,000. A couple of hours at a roulette table and you could be sure it'd be gone. He thought of that old saying: “How do you leave Vegas with a small fortune? Go there with a large one.” Neely didn't care, it was time to pay or play. If he was on a lucky tear, he wasn't going to waste it screwing around.
He put $2000 on Black and lost. He put $1000 on Even and $1000 on Black and split. He put $2000 on Odd and won. The waitress came by and he asked for coffee, it was time to get serious. He put $5000, the table max, on the top third and won. He put $5000 on Red and let it stay. He was going to bet Red for the night, that would test a streak wouldn't it? Red more often than Black over the course of twenty or so spins? He let it ride. Meanwhile, he started going for numbers, putting $100 on any that struck him. It was a terrible way to bet and he remembered those days with Gary while Freddie roamed the str
eets on the TV behind them, seemingly miffed his evil doings couldn't snare the boys' full attention. Betting single numbers was just plain chance and not a very good one at that. The reason he'd left roulette behind all those years ago was he wanted some say in the game's outcome. Poker was head-to-head, after all. But now, with tonight's agenda, perhaps it made sense to test it here. In a game of pure chance, a lucky streak would reveal itself sooner. He lost the next four spins, but hit a 27 on the next. He'd put $200 on the number and had $5000 on Red, so that was a nice pile headed his way. He liked 13 next, and though he had no idea why, he was surer about it than he'd been about any of the first numbers he'd bet on. 13 came up. He went back to Odd-Evens after that, he didn't want people watching him or following his betting. He had the idea that'd muck it up, and this was something he had to be scientific about. The only way to test a theory was to isolate it.
It was almost 11 before he quit for the night, and even then it was only because too many people were watching. He'd tolerated the first and second jumper with grace, but when he had five other bettors mirroring his every move it started to bug him and the game palled. He cashed out without checking the total, he just wanted to move away from the table and the probing eyes.
He almost didn't see her. He felt the edge of something in his hand and looked down at an elegant black business card. On it was just a number, nothing else. He looked up and saw its source, an effing heart attack in black, Jesus. This was the breed you didn't see in movies, they didn't talk about on TV. Whores were bad, dirty, ugly, used. Call girls were the opposite—pretty girls with expensive tastes and flexible morals, part-timers grooving on being bad, rebelling against dad, due back at their sororities in the morning, designer shoes in hand, questions demurely shunted aside. The next tier up from that, however, they didn't even have a name for. No one asked, men just gave them whatever the hell they wanted and considered themselves lucky. She smiled and it was genuine, dammit. How much do you have to pay for genuine? He realized he'd be willing to pay good money just to look at her a little longer, but she disappeared into the crowd like the dream she really was.