by R. M. Koster
It lay throttled in Lyon’s left hand. The top card, if my insight was twenty-twenty, was the deuce of spades, of no use to anyone, but underneath, yes, a black ten, the fourth ten, the ten of spades!
“Are you calling or folding, schmuck?”
But I wasn’t listening to either Lyon or Marlene. I was peering through the deuce of spades and the ten of spades to see if Lyon’s next card would be a nine or a king. No, it was a six. Wait. Did I read it right side up? To be safe I counted the spots. A six all right. No help at all.
“I call.” It was worth ninety-five dollars to find out if I was seer or madman.
Deuce. Ten. Six. As prophesied. I confess to no surprise, though I was hugely pleased with my courage. More people would enjoy the revels of second sight if they had the guts to trust its readings. I was also somewhat greedily disappointed that I had no chips to sandbag Lyon with when he bet into what he surely assumed was two pair, aces and tens. As it was, I could only wait as Lyon bet fifty in hope of scooping a side pot from the man on my right. The latter folded, Lyon withdrew his fifty, and I discovered my third ten.
“So you drew out on me, schmuck,” said Lyon. “Keep playing like that and you’ll be tapped out in no time.”
I nodded meekly and sheep-dogged in the chips. Six hundred twenty-five dollars, two hundred of it mine. Two hundred twelve point five percent on my money and cash to bump with if my gift remained.
“What about that, schmuck?” he said to Fox, who circled the table nervously, like the sharks in Homer’s painting. “The fish drew out the fourth ten.”
“Are you cooling off?”
“No, schmuck. Go in and study.” And he cut the cards to the next man.
All that night, indeed for the rest of the year, I was able to scan people’s holdings through the backs of the cards and to read down through the red-and blue-fanned decks of bicycles as though they were transparent. My view was so piercing and complete that I picked up my hole card only for form’s sake and, in draw, developed the habit, a sort of trademark, of flicking away a bad hand without even lifting the cards.
“Aren’t you going to look at them?” one of my kibitzers would plead, for I attracted kibitzers the way a great surgeon attracts med students—day-beds full of tapped-out fishes who hoped to learn my game, several statistics majors who were writing theses and term papers on the way I drove loopholes through the laws of probability, non-poker-playing celebrities who were looking for thrills, men like Theron Whippet, the legendary scatback, who ran back five Dartmouth punts for touchdowns that year, and Gil Haddock, who while still in prep school had won three backstroke gold medals at the London Olympics, and Joel Quarter, then editor of the Record and later, of course, a famous screen writer (he came out of a catatonic trance to babble about my poker playing when, two years ago, he saw me being wheeled through the rose garden of the Fasholt Clinic), and Schwartztrauber, the sociologist and author, the most popular lecturer at Yale, who was later in Kennedy’s cabinet, and De Botte, the fencing captain, and De Botte’s girls: all these people came to kibitz Sancudo that autumn—“Aren’t you even going to look?”
And I would shrug and sneer down at the mismatched quintet of low hearts and spades which showed their anonymous backs to everyone else and say, “Doesn’t feel like the hand.”
But this was during the great days when I’d mastered my gift. That first night I was only just learning how to use it and played a profitable but inelegant game, winning far too many small pots and losing two rather large ones. On one of these I was so eager to force my right-hand opponent out and thus get a queen to fill my straight it never occurred to me that, if my left-hand opponent also dropped, Qualm, who had by this time found a seat, would fill his flush. I bet the pot, sent both opponents scurrying and wound up second-best, just like a fish. On the other I dealt myself four diamonds and a heart, divined that, whether or not Lyon kept a kicker to his triplet kings, he would not improve, while I, all other players having dropped, would get my fifth diamond, called his hundred, drew one card, and, blinded by second sight, threw away not my worthless heart but one of my precious diamonds. He checked to me; I bet two hundred. He winced, wavered, and finally called. He took my blunder for an almost expert bluff, refrained from calling me schmuck as he pulled in the pot with still shaking fingers, and later on saw several big bets at which he might otherwise have folded. The hand gave me a valuable reputation as a sometime bluffer and, in the end, made me more money than it had cost, but, as I hadn’t engineered it, I couldn’t take much pride in it. Meanwhile I won so many pots, both big and small, that people began to think I was cheating. In view of my biceps no one ventured to accuse me outright, but Lyon sent Fox trotting to Liggett’s for new cards and ten eagle eyes watched my every cut, deal, and shuffle.
In time I learned how to exploit my talent, how to fold a winning hand when the pot was small, or when I had no prospects of my own, how to stay in and draw two cards so a loser on my left would fill his straight and win a little money. Something for everyone. Everyone should get a nice hand now and again, win a pot for himself, so he doesn’t lose heart, so he’ll send his soldiers—platoons of stalwart reds, crack blue battalions—trudging bravely into my set-piece double envelopments. I learned, in short, not only how to flesh my visions, how to incarnate the words whispered to me by the god of thieves, but how to do so with panache. That first night I played a deplorably sloppy game.
All was redeemed, however, on the final hand, final because it put the Lyon-Fox combine temporarily out of business, though it was then long after midnight and time for anyone who planned to show up for the first classes of the term to quit. Hours had passed since Marlene, after waiting under the lamppost for several bilingual choruses, had strutted off to bed. Two players had tapped out. Barker had come, lost his hundred, and gone. I stood some fifteen hundred to the good. Lyon, Qualm, and the one other remaining player were losing heavily, and Fox, after many unheeded pleas for Lyon’s seat, had slunk into his den. Qualm had the deck and called draw. Antes went up; cards fluttered down. I read the three oppos-ing hands as they filled up on the table: eight, nine, ten, jack of hearts, and a black three for Lyon; a low pair for the next man; three aces for Qualm. Then I picked up my own hand: kings of clubs and diamonds, tens of clubs and spades and a nine of clubs—not an exciting holding, considering what Qualm and Lyon had, but when I peered into the deck I saw that if Lyon drew one card (as, of course, he had to) and the next man dropped (which could be arranged), Cherubim would sing on radiant heights while Kiki marched triumphant into the Holy City.
Lyon could not open his possible straight flush no matter how much he would have liked to. The next man’s pair were below jacks. I opened for the pot, which was twenty dollars. Qualm looked again at his three aces and raised fifty; Lyon called; the next man folded. Since my affairs were now being managed by friendly Fate, I simply saw Qualm’s raise and tooted the pitch pipe to the angelic choir. Lyon dismissed his nasty tray and welcomed the lovely Queen of Hearts, filling his straight flush. I plucked the red king and spade ten out of my hand and placed them carefully under the pot in case a broken foe later wailed to see my openers.
“Two cards, please.” A winner can afford good manners, and the Queen and Jack of Maces, who had been nestling illicitly together under the blushing heart queen, tripped into my hand.
For Qualm, who forever after was known as the Third Man, there was a fourth ace. A brisk round of betting now ensued.
The first bet fell to me as original opener, and I matched the pot, which held two hundred thirty dollars. Qualm, who liked round numbers, saw that and raised two seventy. “Five hundred to you, Lyon.”
Lyon, who could scarcely believe his hand, much less the heady sums bet into it, had only six-hundred-odd dollars in front of him.
“I’ll see that, schmuck. And raise one hundred forty. And my car.”
“Make, model, and year,” demanded Qualm, who had won a car on four aces the spring before.
“The pot’s only sixteen hundred.”
“Sixteen hundred then.”
“I’d allow sixteen hundred for calling,” said Qualm. “But for raising purposes a car like that is worth no more than a thousand.”
They wrangled heatedly. Neither asked my opinion, but, as the car would soon be mine, I was content to let the two losers enjoy negotiating its value. Qualm was adamant. A thousand and no more. In the end Lyon, with the odds a million to one in his favor that he would be driving the car to football games all season, yielded. Time was then called while he fished up the keys and registration, endorsed the latter, and flung both into the pot.
I was just able to call, and how Lyon glowed as I shoved my stacks forward. Qualm would have raised if Lyon and I had had anything left worth winning. He pushed in most of his chips and completed his call with fifty-dollar bills from his pocket.
“Straight-flush, schmucks!” howled Lyon, fanning his cards on the table. “Queen high!”
“Good draw,” said Qualm manfully, tapping the table.
“King high,” I sighed, spreading my cards. “Where’s the car parked?”
Lyon slapped his neck where the Amazon blowgunner had hit him with a curare dart. The poison brings instant paralysis.
I didn’t go to bed until after the banks had opened and I’d wired Alfonso his thousand. First I took Lyon’s Hippogriff out on the Merritt Parkway to get the feel of it, easing up to the speed limit as dawn spread west over the Atlantic, running on, seventy, eighty, ninety, past the exit signs of towns where a million blind men were saluting alarm clocks, and out of time altogether into a golden dream.
26
“Bright college years, with pleasures rife, the shortest, gladdest years of life.” So goes the song; I have no call to argue. Many of my contemporaries found those years a swindle. They had debts to pay and daddies to placate; they were puzzled by professors and rejected by girls. And these annoyances seemed great burdens. But, in that fall of 1951 at least, I slid lightly over the surface of life from one easy pleasure to another.
My father had disinherited me; I owed him nothing. Each night, Monday through Thursday, I took a golden egg home from the Law School. Just one moderately large golden egg, for I didn’t want the poor bird to strain and cackle. In my classes the same gift that served me at the poker table gave me test questions even as the professors thought them up. I scarcely needed this advantage, for I was studying history—the one commodity with which my fatherland is bountifully supplied—and read the texts with pleasure. And the first weekend of the term, when my gleaming Hippogriff whisked me to Poughkeepsie, a beautiful girl, the daughter of a millionaire, fell in love with me, inevitably as the sun comes up or autumn trees turn gold. She fell into my hand before I reached for her, and I enjoyed her as I enjoyed all the other lovely things which had obviously been created for my pleasure.
It was the only placid period in my life, and it lasted about six weeks. I had to mispronounce a few words in Pelf’s Spanish class and make one or two spelling errors on each quiz to suspend the instructor’s disbelief. I had to tolerate a certain eminence of scholarship who tried to wring the wonder and fantasy out of European history and stuff in scientific cause and effect. I had to leave Fox and Lyon enough fishmeal to stay alive on. I had to moderate my workouts lest I be overtrained when wrestling season started. I had to exercise a little care with Karen between the 7th and 20th of the month. Those were my problems, all so easy to solve; against them I had money, love, and campus fame. All of which I threw away because I cannot bear tranquility.
Boredom struck, with all its fury, one afternoon in mid-October while I was making love to Karen at an inn in Balling, New York. There had been warning symptoms, but I paid no atten-tion to them, brief spasms of unmotivated wrath which I dismissed as one dismisses the headache and unquiet sleep which are later identified as the advance guard of a joint-cracking grippe. There was the almost irrepressible urge to hurl a cashmere sweater Karen brought me out the window when, one rainy Friday morning, she drove all the way from Vassar to tiptoe into my room, kiss me awake, and lay the rich gift on my pillow. Or the desire to throttle Fox—my hand actually leaped half way across the table—the night he pitched me a fat pot, folding three kings to one of my most transparent bluffs. I would have that kind of attack and then forget about it, for in those days I didn’t spend time examining my life. Then that afternoon … I was driving Karen home from a football weekend, and we stopped at an inn run by a Frenchwoman, who took a fine gallic pleasure in renting us a room for the cocktail hour and feeding us later on. The sheets were cool and smooth. It was the week before the leaves fell, and a nippy breeze played among them just beyond our window. Boeuf bourguignon was simmering downstairs, and Karen was a lovely girl. So warm and loving. All the security of wealth and none of its snobbishness. Eager to please and yet not sloppy. No fawning, no gushed endearments. Gentle glances like a flower turning toward the sun, and a soft sigh each time I entered her. Off at the first stroke of the baton. Little grace notes added to the adagio, and a smiling look up at the maestro to see if he approves. Andante, allegro, presto. Flourish and flick shoots her into her cadenza, but as I waited for her to finish—there would be flute divertissements for me tout de suite—I felt I couldn’t bear it any longer, this being loved along with the surfeit of other blessings, all too easy and no fun any more, and by God I’ll put a little life into things, I’ll just pull away and leave her dangling. Then that seemed too passive and too kind, and I dug my thumbs into her armpits and held her shoulders down and stabbed through her pleasure, but instead of feeling wounded or frightened or betrayed, oh no, she mistook my anger for desire, for ungovernable love, and cried out in joy and threw her head back, and even as I polluted her, gasped, “Yes, Kiki! Oh, yes, Kiki, give me your baby. Oh, Kiki, thank you!”
That was it. She had everything, and I had nothing. She had the joy of loving and the pain of loving and the excitement of risking everything for love and all kinds of hope and worry over whether she was pregnant; in short, she was alive and I was bored. She would go on loving me no matter what, and even if she stopped, if I beat it out of her, what did it matter to me? Oh, I liked her. How could I help liking her? and I was happy for her that she was enjoying life and feeling it deeply, but I didn’t care if she loved me or if she was pregnant or if I ever saw her again. There were plenty more as good or better I could have as effortlessly as I’d had her. That was it: the damned ease of everything was taking the taste out of life.
We didn’t stay to dinner. It was all I could do to nod and grin at her on the short drive to Poughkeepsie, for I didn’t want to hurt her; I didn’t care about her that much. I left her at her dormitory, glowing with love, and sped straight to New York City, where I spent the week. I played at a famous bridge club for tremendous stakes. I scarcely knew the game, and the place was seeded with experts who had written books and devised systems, but no game is very difficult when you can see everyone’s cards, and besides I was lucky, and I won more money than I knew how to spend. I visited an after-hours spot in a brownstone on West 72nd, an elegant place with a band and gaming tables and a heated swimming pool with naked whores of all sexes splashing in it. The roulette ball hopped dutifully after my chips wherever I flung them, till I grew sick of winning and rented one of the little mermen because I’d never done that and wasn’t sure I could. I drilled him smoothly, but neither enjoyed him very much nor had any strong feelings of disgust, so the next night I bought a Puerto Rican girl, green eyes and café-crème skin, to see if I could make her come. And when this proved easier than I’d expected, I took her dancing to see if I could have her for nothing. And when I found I could, I asked her to take care of a couple of men I’d met at the bridge club to see if she’d do that for me. And she
said she didn’t mind, to send them over to her apartment, and one of them had such a good time he gave her a fifty-dollar bill, and Linda—her name was Linda—handed it to me as soon as I walked in that night. Then I got tired of New York and decided to go back to New Haven for the football game, and Linda cried and begged me to take her with me and said she wasn’t lazy like a lot of girls and would keep me well, so I put her in the car along with her two suitcases and the stuffed panda some john had bought her at the Latin Quarter and zipped her across the state line and set her up in an apartment opposite Cotton Mather College and began sending her customers, and pretty soon she was earning me three or four hundred a week.
After that week in New York I began sleeping more and more, until I was averaging about fourteen hours a day, and of course going, less and less to class, even cutting Pelf’s Spanish class, attendance at which I considered a debt of honor, and missing my workouts. I devoted my waking hours to business, that is gambling and vice, playing poker at the Law School and fishing fresh whores from New York. Soon I had the campus bracketed, north, south, east, and west, and while I relied solely on word-of-mouth advertising, my merchandise was high in quality and the demand for it intense, so the girls worked day and night, and the money rolled in. And as I made my rounds, Linda on Monday afternoon; Monika, my blond Valkyrie, on Tuesdays; on Wednesdays, sweet San Antone Annie; on Thursdays Brooklyn Faye; collecting the receipts, passing back rent and laundry money and a bit for food and frills, and of course ladling affection freely, I felt, as successful businessmen are wont, that I was not merely turning a profit but serving the world as well. Here I’d lifted my girls out of foul bars and whorehouses and set them down in puritan New England where they need fear neither disease nor degenerates but consorted only with the clean-limbed sons of the best families in America. As for my customers, I felt a perfect Dr. Schweitzer to those benighted college boys, for blue balls was epidemic in New Haven in those days, and many was the lad whose sanity I saved of a Sunday evening when the little tease who’d tortured him all weekend tripped back to Smith or Bryn Mawr.