A Film by Spencer Ludwig

by David Flusfeder

  Spencer lifts the bankroll out of his pocket. He holds it up to the breeze, and it would be so easy now just to let it go, to watch the notes tumbling and swooping in the breeze. If this were a film then that is what he would probably do, the final image, banknotes flying like hungry birds over the Atlantic City beach, to some people’s consternation and others’ glee.

  So he lets two go, just to test their flight, and to see how hard it would be to film. If real money were to be used—and wouldn’t that be a grand thing?—then he would have only one shot at it. He lets the notes go, one catches the wind and it does just what he had hoped it would, fluttering, swooping, a wild rising, invisible for a moment in front of a cloud, and then falling, a sudden dip, holding for a moment about ten feet from the sand. It startles a solitary beachcomber, who makes an instinctive grab for it even though it is impossible, out of reach, and his hand grasps at air as the note rises again, and drifts over the ocean. The other bill falls beneath the notice of the wind and drops beside Jimmy Ludwig’s wheelchair.

  Spencer’s father reaches for it. Spencer wonders if he might use Monopoly money, whether it could have the same effect, green and purple and brown play notes drifting over Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Avenue and the Boardwalk and the beach and the ocean.

  His father can’t quite pick up the hundred-dollar bill. His fingertips scrabble against the paper, which rests primly against the wooden ramp. Spencer reaches down to retrieve it for him.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Your money.’ ‘Too much.’ ‘Or not enough.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was a…misunderstanding. You weren’t playing for the stakes you thought you were.’

  ‘I don’t want it. Give me the five dollars.’

  ‘You thought you were playing for twenty-five cents a point. Actually you were playing for two hundred and fifty dollars a point. You understand? Just as well you won. We’d’ve been in some kind of trouble if you’d lost. That guy you were playing against? I’m not sure I took to him.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  Is it possible to steal money from someone who doesn’t know he has it? Of course it is, that’s what makes bankers rich. Spencer has his entry to the tournament, but he tries again to explain to his father, backgammon stakes, twenty-five cents, two hundred and fifty dollars, misunderstandings, Bob, but his father stubbornly clings to his demand for the four dollars and seventy-five cents that he thinks he is owed; and the sun is going up, and the beach is getting warmer, and his father is becoming irritated by his own incomprehension of what Spencer is trying to explain, and by being thwarted of his winnings, the trophy of his accomplishment, the proof that he can still compete with, and triumph over, other men.

  ‘I need to get some sleep,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Aren’t you going gambling?’ his father says.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Sure. The poker tournament. But that’s later, in the afternoon. Do you mind?’

  Spencer helps his father manoeuvre back towards the Boardwalk.

  ‘I don’t mind. But I want my five dollars.’

  ‘Here. I think I have it.’ Spencer roots through his trousers, manages to find a crumpled five-dollar bill. He smooths Lincoln’s face before passing it to his father.

  ‘Come on. I’m going to get some sleep. I’ll buy you breakfast on the way.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Spencer rolls up his sleeve to show his father his watch.

  ‘How are you enjoying it?’

  ‘I love it,’ Spencer says, and he thinks he does.

  Chapter Ten

  The winner of the Second Annual Atlantic City Poker Classic will receive $50,000. Spencer has bought his ticket, received his seat allocation, and performed his pre-tournament preparations. He has emptied bowels and bladder, bathed, bought his bag of mixed nuts, his bottle of water. Dwight, before his disappearance, had supplied several hours of boxing DVDs that will keep his father in one, predictable place. Jimmy Ludwig, his cut still seeping beneath the Band-Aid on his head, a bruise growing around it, purple and black and red, has sandwiches and water on the table beside his armchair, his favourite boxer, Thomas ‘The Hit Man’ Hearns, on the television screen in front of him; and Spencer steps reluctant and thrilled into that zone familiar to con-men and utopianists where he has already, in his mind, won the tournament and the money.

  It is a glorious masochistic exalted feeling, to walk down a boulevard of shops and believe that anything in them could be his. This must be how his daughter thinks. This must be what his father wanted from America.

  He will repay his father for his inadvertent loan with one hundred per cent interest or, better, bestow a gift to charity in his father’s name—plant a tree in Warsaw, make an endowment for students from war zones to study engineering and law. He will sell back the wheelchair and top up the proceeds with some more cash for the Baumbachs. He could buy this for his daughter, and this for her mother, and this for his father, and this for Abbie, and this for Michelle, and this (Fuck you!) for Rick Violet, and these things for himself, a dandy, a superman, Gentleman Spencer Ludwig, ivory toothpick, gold-topped cane, diamond tooth, I raise, I reraise!, a tip of his hat.

  Excuse me, gentlemen, they’re waiting for me on set. To imagine it is to own it.

  Perhaps Spencer’s historical loftiness is the outsider’s ease. If you can’t buy, then you’re not implicated. Splash him into the mainstream and he might swim no more gracefully than any of them.

  But he doesn’t have the money, to imagine it is to curse it into non-being, he hasn’t won the poker tournament, it hasn’t even started yet.

  He walks along Pacific Avenue. A seagull with a broken wing flaps futilely in the road. Sedans and taxicabs swerve to avoid it.

  Spencer, who has never believed in omens before, braves the traffic. He stands between lanes, one foot on a broken line, the other beside, almost touching, the damaged bird. Cars swerve around them both now as Spencer softens his outraged sense of squeamishness, forces his unwilling hands to pick up the bird, which flaps even harder now. He had not realised quite how wide a seagull’s wingspan is. He averts his face, he clenches the frantic wing tight, imagining himself to be Officer Porrelli and the seagull a lame malefactor. The seagull’s heart beats against his chest as Spencer scurries to the safety of the sidewalk. And what now? Is there a hospital ward for damaged birds? The Peter Lawford wing, maybe. Spencer stands with a maimed seagull in his arms. He rests it down on the sidewalk and walks to the lights of the casino.

  Spencer starts the tournament steadily. In the first rounds, he comes to an understanding of the players at his table, who he needs to make a stand against, whose chips are there for the taking. The player to his right conforms to a particularly detestable species of poker sub-chic, with his peculiarly shaped, lumpy body, the sunglasses, DiamondPoker T-shirt, iPod, cap from the Bellagio casino, and the undeserved self-regard of a boy whose mother made the mistake of loving him too much.

  Spencer’s rhythm and timing are good. He is able to push people off pots and when he does go to a showdown, his is always the winning hand. The world shrinks to the felt. At spare moments he chats to the player two to his left, a young Brazilian, who plays with aggressive verve and charm, and has a taste, which Spencer shares, for psychedelic music of the 1960s.

  The Brazilian boy breaks off a conversation about Skip Spence to retreat into himself as he gets involved in a large pot against the lumpy boy. The Brazilian pushes the remainder of his chips in front of him and leans back. His opponent flicks the edges of his cards, counts out the amount it will cost him to call, and stares at the Brazilian through the mirror of his shades. He dwells some more. Reluctantly, eventually, he folds. The Brazilian boy grins and shows his cards, a seven and a two, garbage, a bluff, and he rakes in the pot with a delightfully innocent glee.

  The Brazilian can’t stop grinning. ‘I love poker, I love it!’ he says. ‘The emotion! All the different things you feel, the heart goe
s bump-bump-bump!’

  Spencer loves it too, especially now, when he’s in the form and concentration of his life. He needs a red ace, he gets it. He calls a bet on the turn because he knows he can bully his opponent out of the pot with a bet on the river. He has more chips than anyone else at his table, he is an early leader of the tournament.

  ‘Os Mutantes,’ the Brazilian boy says. ‘You’re in the zone,’ and Spencer half nods in acknowledgement.

  He is in the zone. Nothing else exists. Until it does; he is moved, to balance a short-handed table on the far side of the room. He carries his chips in a plastic rack and his jacket on his arm and his bag of nuts clenched in his mouth, and he follows the tournament director to his new seat, where the back of his head is exposed to an aisle, the air is colder, and he is wedged uncomfortably tight between two large men, who are, like the rest of the table, hostile strangers. He thinks of lumpy boy with a surprising sentimentality. He wants to be back at his first table, where everything was known and under his control; he makes an early-position raise with ace-queen, misses the flop, and gets involved in a skirmish with one of the large men on the big blind, who bullies him out of the pot on the turn and then shows his inferior ace. He calls a raise, and then cravenly folds when the raiser makes a continuation bet on the flop. His concentration has slipped and his chips are dribbling away and he becomes over-aware of unnecessary things, the disconcerting angle of the dealer’s name badge, the bitter, not entirely unpleasant odour of his neighbours who are squeezing against him, and the whir of the air conditioning, which reminds him of his father’s oxygen machine.

  Spencer wins a few chips back, loses more, and as players are eliminated around him, and tables broken up, he is moved again twice. He is sitting again now with both lumpy boy and the Brazilian. The dinner break approaches, Spencer’s stack is small and hunted. He goes all-in three times in a row, hoping to double up or end what is becoming a torment. His place is not here. He had been foolish to believe it might be. He is called the third time, by a player with even fewer chips than he has, whose pair of kings holds up rather easily against Spencer’s 6-3 off-suit. Trying to avoid the Brazilian boy’s eyes, in case he sees reproach in them, he inadvertently catches the gaze of an old grinder who reminds him of Gambler Bob, and whose expression offers him the coldest kind of pity.

  During the break Spencer takes a walk along the seafront. He should check on his father but he doesn’t want to inflict his sense of failure on anyone else, or maybe just doesn’t want his father, with his expert sense for other people’s weakness, to sniff it.

  Going along the Boardwalk, Spencer imagines it populated with characters from his own films. That could be Gold the architect solemnly taking out one of his biros to draw a line in the air in congruence with the square roof of the Wild West casino, and he sees Robert W, reborn as a beachcomber, kicking through the sand, his hat pulled down low against the sun. He sees the figures but can’t picture the faces, he can recall John Wayne’s face, or Dominique Sanda’s, or Martin LaSalle’s better than any of his own. But what he can perfectly imagine is his daughter, her coiled body, ready to lift into flight, her narrow features, her hair falling down in a new, favoured way.

  Spencer Ludwig walks back to the casino, he is about to be knocked out of a tournament, he has reached no resolution with his father, the Atlantic breeze cuts through. Taxi-rickshaw riders huddle inside their vehicles. Outside the Horseshoe two attenuated shabby men stare through the glass doors. Spencer joins them. Their lack of money forbids entry. This is democracy and they are disqualified from participating in it. Lights and colour are forbidden them.

  He goes down to the underground car park, where his father’s car sits, peaceable and scarred. Spencer gets behind the driving wheel. He has done this before, in other cars of his father’s, similarly black and leathered, child Spencer at the wheel imagining all encumbrances gone while driving fast to elsewhere. The air is somewhat rank in this car. On the back seat a sealed plastic bag contains a rotting banana and two slightly gooey plums.

  He could stay here, build his life in this car. The back seat is roomy enough to sleep on, or the front passenger seat, which fully reclines, might be even better; the back seat could be his daytime space, that’s where he’d do his entertaining and play internet poker. He could breakfast and dine on room service, he wouldn’t even have to leave the garage for drive-through meals.

  It would be good to build a life in this car, a better prospect than returning to the tournament just to die there. But this is reborn Spencer now, the man becoming something new. No obstacle too high, no humiliation too gross.

  The tournament area has shrunk. There are only four tables left. Spencer tries to remember where he was sitting.

  ‘Hey Anglo! You’re over here.’ The call is from the Brazilian boy sitting at his table.

  ‘I thought I’d maybe just watch.’

  ‘Chip and a chair, man.’

  Indeed. At a seat untenanted apart from Spencer’s jacket hanging loosely off its back, a bag of assorted nuts dwarfs his tiny stack of chips. Spencer sits down, just in time for his hand not to be declared dead. His heart is dully knocking. He tells himself that he won’t look at his cards, he’ll just have to go allin regardless of his holding. The peculiarly shaped young man, whose mother loved him too much, is performing masturba-tory riffling manoeuvres with his towers of chips. Spencer can hold his chips easily in the palm of one hand.

  The cards are shuffled and dealt. Spencer is in the big blind, lumpy mother-love, on his immediate left, is under the gun.

  ‘Sir. Sir?’ says the lumpy boy. ‘Can I see how many chips you have?’

  Spencer, not bothering to hide his disconsolation, opens his hand, letting his chips roll to the felt. He is pleased, in a doleful sort of way, that they roll in together and turn over together.

  ‘All-in blind. Raise of a thousand,’ says the dealer.

  That wasn’t what he was intending, but it doesn’t matter. The Brazilian boy calls, so does lumpy boy, so does the old grinder, whose skin is slightly greyer than his hair. Spencer makes his preparations to leave. He puts on his jacket, brushes the dust left by his nuts into the cup of his hand and sprinkles it beneath his chair. He doesn’t look at his cards or follow the action, there doesn’t seem to be any point. His attention turns back to the table when he sees the dealer push a pile of chips his way.

  ‘Nice catch,’ lumpy boy says.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Spencer, with slightly greater sincerity.

  The heartfelt magic of the Coup Classique. His stack is still small but at least he is alive. He has five times the big blind. He could even afford to pass the next hand.

  Spencer raises the next hand. Five players call him, including lumpy boy. This is not good, to be out of position against multiple opponents, including the most aggressive player at the table. He looks at his cards to see five of spades, two of clubs, one of the worst starting hands in poker, and not the exit hand he would have chosen. The flop comes down 349, rainbow. Spencer checks. Lumpy boy makes a small bet, everyone else passes. Spencer calls with the open-ended straight draw.

  The turn is a king. Spencer checks, and he hopes this might be taken for aggression, not weakness, the nemesis setting out to trap, maybe Spencer can see the river card without putting in the rest of his chips. Lumpy boy bets, putting Spencer all-in.

  ‘I have to call,’ Spencer says, tossing in the last of his chips.

  ‘On their backs please, gentlemen,’ the dealer says.

  They table their cards. Spencer shows his lunge at the straight. Lumpy boy turns over pocket aces.

  ‘It’s OK, you have outs,’ the Brazilian boy says. ‘Only four of ‘em,’ says the grey old gambler. ‘I folded a pair of sixes.’

  ‘Make that three. I folded an ace,’ says a player at the far end of the table.

  Spencer instantly hates both men, more than he can ever remember hating anyone before. Life in the car would be so much better than this. He
would even rather still be outside in the cold, standing peering in at the lights.

  ‘Good luck,’ the Brazilian boy says.

  ‘Thank you,’ Spencer says.

  It saddens Spencer even further that he will never know the Brazilian boy’s name.

  The dealer turns over the river card, which is the ace of diamonds, giving lumpy boy a set of aces but making Spencer’s straight.

  Almost apologetically, Spencer rakes in the chips. ‘Nice catch,’ the lumpy boy says again, burning at him. ‘Thank you,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Slow-playing rockets,’ the old gambler says, shaking his head in disapproval.

  Lumpy boy’s sunglasses tip down his nose. He rubs his face, which is blushing—his father has caught him out in a lie, the mirror tells the truth, his mother might no longer love him.

  Hatred and fear and self-pity bite into the air around him. Spencer likes to have enemies at the table. It gives him focus.

  Now he has the chips, now he has to play, and play Spencer does. He plays far more pots than his cards could possibly allow. He catches the Brazilian boy out in one of his moments of bluffing flair. He in turn bluffs lumpy boy out of a sizeable pot. And then he comes up against the old grinder.

  They are down to the last thirteen players. All of them are in the money. Nine will return for tomorrow’s final table, where the big prizes will be won. Soon the tournament director will come by with plastic bags to store the survivors’ chips for the night. The rail birds will drift away. Spencer’s bag of nuts is almost empty. He picks through the dust, searching for an almond among the rejected cashews, and raises on the button with ace-queen of clubs.

  The future is everywhere, even in Atlantic City. The grinder, who could be Spencer in twenty years’ time, every situation seen before, every action performed with slow deliberation, considers his response.

  ‘I’ve never been to Brazil,’ Spencer tells the Brazilian boy.