He holds it in his hand, examines the detail.
He does not move. He stays this way for a long time, as long as he can.
His concentration broken, he looks at the clock.
Five till 7.
Everything seems to change.
He rings the bell.
CITY OF COMMERCEBY NEAL POLLACK
The call came at 4 p.m., just when I was starting my prep for the day’s first bong hit. It had been weeks since I’d heard from my agent. I put down my gear and listened.
“Some cherry producer at New Line likes your treatment for
This was a crappy horror comedy that I’d written two years before, about people whose allergies get so bad they start turning into plants. Not exactly what I’d dreamed about when I moved here. But after a while, you’ve sleepwalked long enough so you’re not really dreaming anymore.
“No shit?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Stupid fuck read your book, and he thinks you can still write.”
Silence, as I decided whether or not to defend myself.
“You got a clean shirt, one with buttons?” he asked.
“I
“Good. Because I scored you a sit-down at 3:30. Do
He bitched at me for a few minutes, then turned nice when he asked if I knew where he could get some weed. By the time I got his ass off the phone, Karen was coming in the door, looking fine as ever. Admissions of love came less and less frequently from her these days, not that I blamed her. One minute she was at a Santa Monica beach party getting felt up in a hammock by a promising novelist, and before she could hiccup, she found herself paying the mortgage on a two-bedroom condo in Glassell Park and coming home every day to an unshaven, unemployed stoner. She was as bitter as an unripe plum, so I was glad to have some good news for her. I just about fell on my ass when she threw her arms around my neck and put her tongue in my ear.
“You get this gig,” she said, “and I’ll cruise you up to Ojai for a weekend of blowjobs you’ll never forget.”
I hadn’t received an offer like that in nearly a decade. She still loved, me, maybe. But I was feeling a little jittery at that moment, and I told her so.
“Maybe I should…”
She blanched whiter than a snow leopard in February.
“No, Nick,” she said. “You’re
“I’ll play a few low-stakes hands and be home by mid-night,” I said, reassuring myself as much as her.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Come on, babe,” I said. “You know it relaxes me.”
“It does anything but.”
I picked my keys off the kitchen counter and headed for the door.
“You’re going
“The 5 can be a real bastard this time of night,” I said.
I was out the door so quickly she couldn’t possibly have jinxed my opening flop.
Before I moved to California, I played poker occasionally at basement tables with ten-cent antes, where the real object was to drink as much Old Style as possible without vomiting. Winning meant zero, and losing even less. I had no idea that I was coming to a place where poker transcended hobby, leaped above pastime, and approached something near civic religion. The first couple of home games almost turned me back toward the path of righteousness; one was full of twenty-five-year-old schmucks hatching plans to date-rape a stripper in Malibu, and the other featured new dads who were busy discussing home renovations and the difficulties of finding a reliable nanny who’d work for less than seventeen dollars an hour. Neither scene appealed much. In fact, I couldn’t think of
Then one night, a guy mentioned that he was heading out to Commerce that weekend to play in some tournament that might get him into some other tournament that might get him into the World Series of Poker. I guess it had never occurred to me that the three thousand gambling billboards I saw a week could be advertising poker rooms. And when he said that the games ran twenty-four hours a day, all year, the amateur anthropologist in me began to quiver. This, I thought, could be the ideal canvas for my art, so I went along.
City of Commerce may be the most ironically named place in America, which is saying a lot. I suppose it was once full of factories that made things. But that’s not what commerce is about in this world anymore. The only commerce now is a five-cent rake on the pot. One person in fifty goes home with a profit and one in five thousand actually makes a living. If those had been the commercial odds during the Industrial Revolution, Californians would still be riding donkeys down to the San Diego Mission. Maybe we’ll get there still.
From the moment I first walked in under the faux-gold-mirrored awning, lit with a circumferential rectangle of two-inch-wide bulbs, I knew I was sunk. This hardly represented the seamiest gambling scene I’d encountered- that honor goes to the Friday midnight riverboat blackjack cruise in Joliet, Illinois-but it was probably the most baroque. The place obviously prospered beyond measure. However, unlike Vegas patrons, these players required little frippery. The most lavish theme in the world couldn’t draw the casual gambling tourist to City of Commerce night after night. They were here to play cards.
I’ve never seen garbage on the floor. Someone’s always vacuuming the rugs or polishing the faux-marble, and there’s no sign of chipping paint. The casino has a sushi bar and a sports bar full of flat-screen TVs. Yet the place always seems suffused with a kind of jaundice; the lighting scheme encourages the shakes, and nausea. It’s ugly, almost as though the casino were deliberately trying to throw us off our game.
I prepared for my meeting, in my mind, as I whipped the Acura down the 110, and then onto I-5 as I moved through Downtown, crawling past merges like a sheep on wheels being herded off to slaughter. But by the time I was halfway to Commerce, thoughts of pitching grew cloudy, replaced by visions of flush draws dancing in my head. The landscape grew generic, sooty, industrial, less definitively L.A. to the casual observer. This town, to me, isn’t most notable for its candlelit, leather-bound nightclubs or fancy Valley gallerias. Like anywhere else, it’s the outlet malls and truck-stop Arby’s, pathetic little trees dwarfed by ten-foot freeway sound walls. I could be leaving San Antonio, or Atlanta. By the time I get to Commerce, the empty concrete lots, smokestacks, and shoddy public parks call Gary, Indiana to mind. What else can I think about in such an environment but poker?
The parking lot was as full as visiting day at maximum security. I pulled the car into a spot in the back row, between a gleaming Cadillac SUV and an Oldsmobile that looked like it hadn’t been washed since 1973. There was someone inside the Cadillac. I could see the glint of a cigarette through the tinted windows. I should probably have been looking in front of me instead. In my hurry to make it to the tables, I slammed my right big toe into the curb, sending a hot shard of pain up through my leg. It felt like I might lose the nail. Why the fuck did I wear sandals to the casino anyway? I limped to the awning, past the lifetime smokers getting their hourly fix, and into the California Games Room with its ridiculous Wheels of Fortune and lucky-hand jackpot tables. Then past the two twelve-foot- high gold plaster sphinxes, the casino’s one concession to Vegas-style garishness, and on into the main gaming hall.
Though I recognized the woman working the board, one of an interchangeable rotation of semi-attractive Filipinas who worked there, she didn’t know me from the other 1,200 low-rent fliers who’d approached her since the start of her shift, asking if there were any open spots at the 3-6 or 4-8 tables. As it turned out, the waiting list
