Unfortunately, yes. And now I’m not at all sure I should have.
Of course you should have. I’m not going to take advantage. I swear. Right here on this empty coffee cup. I swear I’ll never make a single joke.
I think you just did.
Sort of. But that’ll be the last one.
Okay. Nothing I can do about it now anyway.
Sure there is. Talk about it.
There’s nothing to talk about.
How long has this been going on?
Years. Since the first time Melissa went into rehab.
How odd.
Yes. A funny coincidence.
Sure.
Or whatever.
It’s not physical, is it? I mean, they have drugs for that.
No, it’s not physical. I don’t have to go to a doctor to know that. Though I did. I went to all the doctors. There’s nothing wrong with me. Physically.
Oh dear.
Oh dear, I repeated. Anyway, you can imagine how uncomfortable this conversation is making me. So maybe we can drop it now?
Dorita looked at me sympathetically. It was a new and strange experience, that look. I didn’t know quite what to make of it.
All right, she said softly, but we’re coming back to it soon.
Please.
No, we are, she said, in her don’t-mess-with-me tone. We’re going to fix it.
Ah. You are an arrogant young thing. If only it were so easy.
I admit to the arrogant bit. But I’m not so young anymore. And we are going to fix it.
I’d like to take you up on that. But I don’t think we should be jeopardizing our thing with this. I shouldn’t have brought it up.
I have powers that you can’t even guess at, darling.
I have no doubt of it, and I’d love to see you demonstrate them. But maybe on someone else. I’ll watch.
You’ll need protective glasses.
Listen, I appreciate the offer, but frankly I’d rather you helped me with my poker game.
Not my field, I’m afraid.
Not that way. Come to the casino with me. Just hang around. Keep my spirits up.
Jesus, that’s a job for Hercules. Anyway, I thought you had meds for that. Your saintly shrink. The miracle worker.
Now don’t you start on Sheila. She saved my life, you know.
I know, I know. My competition. Anyway, tell you what. Next time you’re going to throw another stack of cash away at the casino, call me. I’ll be your, what do they call them? Your sponsor. Pull you back from the abyss.
Please, baby doll, no AA jokes. I get enough of that at home.
I’m sure it’s a laugh riot, darling.
You’re too kind.
I’ll try not to step on wifey’s toes again.
Damn. It was hard to keep that girl away from the edge.
43.
I was a bit surprised when Jake invited me back to his game. Maybe I hadn’t made as much of an ass of myself as I’d thought. Or the rest of them had been as drunk as me, and hadn’t noticed.
I asked him if I could bring my buddy Butch along. With him there I’d be more likely to behave. Jake checked with Mike. It was okay. They’d squeeze him in.
I didn’t tell him what Butch did for a living.
The game was in the back room of an arty little joint in the Village. The Dane wasn’t there. I was relieved. The rest of them were there. Jonesie, with a cowboy hat, two diamond earrings. Maybe he really was a famous actor. Andrea, in a black leather bustier and very red lipstick. She made me nervous, in a nice kind of way. High school nervous. Unworthy of talking to such an enticing creature.
Mike was in the captain’s chair, looking fierce in a shirt with Chinese characters that he claimed said ‘death to transgressors.’ Riverstreet, looking sharp in a blue pinstripe with thirties-style pleats. Straight Jake, all Armani and carrying a large black portfolio. Preparing a grant proposal, he said.
Early on, the banter was loose and the play desultory. Just a bunch of players having a good time. Butch fit right in. He always did. He was that kind of guy.
There wasn’t much check-raising, no big bluffs, at least that I was able to ferret out. And Drunk Jake stayed relatively sober.
The feel of the game turned when I took Drunk Jake for a big pot.
It was heads up. The flop came Jack of hearts, spade Ten, spade Three. I bet my Ace Jack. Pair of Jacks, Ace kicker. Pretty good hand. Jake called. The turn was a third spade. I bet, Jake put in a big raise. I called, feeling a little queasy about it. Jake’s confidence was palpable. He could have the flush. But the pot was big, he could be bluffing, and my Ace was the spade, so. I had a twenty-five-percent chance of improving to the nuts, the best possible hand, even if he hit the flush. I hung in. Swallowed hard. And saw that fourth spade hit on the river. Jake stared at it. You could read him like a New York Post headline. He knew that card could be big trouble. He looked at me. I smiled. He shook his head.
He checked.
I bet big.
He stared me down. He looked at me for a long time. Wondering. Calculating. Going back over the previous rounds of betting. Had I been getting the odds to try to outdraw him? If I wasn’t on a draw, could I have something big enough to have stayed in the pot? There was a Ten on board. I could have pocket Tens. Trip Tens was certainly enough to play with.
I was still smiling at him. He didn’t know if my smile was real or manufactured. I could just be happy, to have hit my Ace-high flush. But I wouldn’t want to show him that. So maybe I was bluffing, trying to make him think I had it. Or maybe I had it, knew that he’d know that I’d know that he’d know that I wouldn’t want to show it but might be bluffing, and was…well, you get the picture. Poker’s not an easy game.
In the end, he couldn’t take the chance. That I’d gleefully turn over a pair of fours while pulling in his money. If I had the spade Ace, he could say I was lucky. Outdrew him. If he folded and I didn’t have it, he’d look a fool.
He called.
I showed my spade Ace. He looked away.
Fuck, he said. I knew it.
He turned over his spade King Queen, threw them into the middle of the table. He got up, walked to the beer keg, drew out a pint into a plastic cup. Sat back down.
This was a new Jake. Normally he took the beats good-naturedly. He was drinking less this time. He wasn’t playing the buffoon. He was playing well. You could feel his ambition.
He wants to crush me, I thought.
I was game for the challenge. I knew it was foolish. Poker isn’t like high jumping, or tennis. You don’t draw on extra reserves of energy and suddenly transcend your opponent’s performance. There’s too much luck involved. Like that last hand. I’d played it right. And over the long haul I’d make money playing that hand that way. But on
