“We’ll keep an eye on you. Your mom has brought you to zero with us.”
“How about that?”
They chatted until the nurse came in to say Zack had to rest. They said their good-byes, and the nurse led them out, but not before Damian said a prayer for Zack’s full recovery. He watched them leave, thinking he was lucky to have such friends. Thinking that he owed his mother big-time. And thinking something else.
Anthony had left Zack’s iPhone on the night table. He picked it up and played back his coma mutterings.
The first time, all he heard was meaningless mumblings—not even distinct syllables or patterns, which made him think that the claims were even loonier than suspected. He didn’t know what Aramaic sounded like, but this was pure deep-sleep blather.
He played it a few times with his ear pressed hard against the tiny speaker.
Suddenly the string of nonsense morphemes took on a vague familiarity. He couldn’t determine if it was real language or not; and he knew that he didn’t understand a syllable of the mutterings. But just beneath the skin of things, he sensed that what he had uttered was embedded deeply in his brain.
22
THREE WEEKS LATER
From the distance, it appeared as if the Emerald City had fallen out of Oz and into the middle of the Connecticut woods.
Foxwoods Resort Casino was a series of towers pressed into a huge multilayered structure blazing with lights. According to Anthony, it was the largest casino in the world, with nearly five million square feet, two-thirds of which was devoted to gambling and serving fifty thousand people per day. Apparently the Pequot Indians were making up for the bilking their cousins took on Manhattan Island.
Three weeks had passed since Zack’s release from the hospital. But for a slight headache, he felt normal. He no longer needed a cane and was back at the NU gym regaining strength. He was also back at his apartment and working on his thesis. He didn’t tell his mother, but he still owed nearly $4,000 on his Discover card. He had put on weight, his hair had grown back, and he sported a closely trimmed beard to discourage public recognition. The likelihood of that was low since in the YouTube video he looked like roadkill. Fortunately, no crazies had stopped him on the street for a miracle. A few reporters had met him on his release. He’d explained politely that he was not a miracle, that coma patients sometimes wake up, and that the Easter date was pure coincidence. As for reciting Jesus’s words in Aramaic, he had no explanation.
A week later, he was a nonstory.
Zack had never been to a casino, so as celebration of his “rebirth,” Damian and Anthony drove him to the Mashantucket, Connecticut, resort. Despite his mother’s worry, this wasn’t going to jump-start an addiction. He had sworn off online poker. This was simply an outing with pals. And maybe, if he was lucky, he’d make a few bucks to pay down Discover.
Stepping into the casino was like entering a hysterical penny arcade. Machines jingle-jangled, whistles blew, sirens wailed, coins tumbled, lights pulsed. Roulette wheels, gaming tables, and one-armed bandits were running at lunatic speed. The place was a full-scale blitz on the senses for the sole purpose of creating an adrenaline rush to toss about one’s money. And it was working that Friday night. The place was mobbed, with people moving up and down aisles holding plastic tubs of quarters. This was nothing like the movies with women in elegant sheaths and men in tuxedos with martinis. This crowd could have been right out of the bleachers at Fenway: baggy jeans, tight pink shorts on fat bottoms, bandannas, tattoos, Hawaiian shirts, Red Sox tees, Bud Lights. “Not exactly
“Lucky for us,” Damian said.
“Look around you, man,” Anthony said. “What you see all comes down to this: They want your money and you want theirs. The rest is just excuse.”
“You cynical devil, you.”
“It’s the truth,” Damian said. “The place is a temple to mammon.”
“But it’s not going to stop you from dropping a few bucks.”
“Heck, no. When in Rome, et cetera.”
“Think there’s gambling in heaven?” Zack asked.
“I’m counting on it.”
They walked a few crowded aisles as the jangling of slot machines brought to mind the Wordsworth line: “The still, sad music of humanity.”
Most players looked like regulars, feeding coins and pressing buttons, undeterred when a pile of winnings didn’t jingle down. Or when they did. They settled at different machines, Zack finding one next to a middle-aged woman with freeze-dried yellow hair and a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt, smoking a cigarette and drinking what looked like a Pepsi. She had just won a small pile of coins.
“That’s the one you want,” she said, nodding at a “Double Diamond Deluxe” across the aisle. “I’ve got a sixth sense.”
He thanked her and deposited four quarters into the slot and hit the button. The machine made a lot of noise, but the rollers turned up nothing.
“Keep doing that,” the woman said, and left.
Four more times he fed the machine. Four more times he lost. “Nice sixth sense,” he said. He found Damian and Anthony and headed into the poker room, which boasted over a hundred tables open 24/7 with limit and no- limit games all the time.
Anthony and Damian wandered off while Zack moved to the Texas hold ’em area, where he floated from table to table. He had about $400 in cash, which kept tugging at him to settle somewhere. After a few minutes, he fell in with a gallery around a foursome—a young black male in a red T-shirt and tinted goggles; two white guys in their forties, one wearing a plaid watch hat with a ruddy Irish face, the other a round guy with a smooth face and quick eyes. The fourth player was a heavyset Asian in his thirties with chips stacked like castle turrets. He glanced at Zack, then went back to the game.
Throughout the hands, the other players were loose, commenting on the cards. But the Asian guy was without affect. He didn’t engage in the banter, nor did he fidget, perspire, or yield the slightest expression. He looked like a Buddha in a black golf shirt whose only communication was finger flicks to the dealer. Zack watched a few hands until the black guy sensed Zack’s interest and asked if he wanted to join in. But Zack said, “No thanks,” and quickly moved away.
He could barely get out the words because something strange had happened. He had watched four hands, getting a mental flash of the Asian’s pocket cards. The first occurrence he discounted as a mere hunch that the guy had a pocket pair of nines. When, in fact, the guy did turn over nines, Zack told himself that he had unconsciously registered some microexpression or a body cue. During the next hand, it happened again. The guy peeked at his cards, and Zack saw an ace of clubs and a three of hearts. Both the turn and the river cards were aces, and the guy won on three of a kind.
It was the third hand that spooked Zack.
The blinds went in, and the dealer dealt the two down cards to each player. Bets were made, then the dealer laid down the flop, a ten and three of clubs and a queen of hearts. The first guy folded, leaving three others and the Asian. The bet was the black guy’s and he slid $50 onto the table. The Asian and the other guy called him, and the turn card was a three of diamonds. The Asian bet a weak fifty, and the next guy hesitated, then met the fifty and called. The river card was an ace of spades, which got the black guy to fold, leaving the Asian and his opponent, who bet $200—raising the pot to about $600. When the Asian did a quick recheck of his pocket, Zack’s mind glimpsed the corner spots—two queens, diamonds and spades—as if seen through the guy’s eyes.
The guy looked up at Zack as if sensing the weird link. But the other player snapped him out of it. “To you.” The Asian broke his hold on Zack and bet another fifty. When the final bets were made and the cards were dealt, the Asian guy turned over his pocket cards and claimed the pot with three queens, two in the down cards.
Zack quietly slipped away from the table and headed for the men’s room. His head had a weird buzz, and his heart rate had kicked up. At the sink he splashed cold water on his face and glanced in the mirror at himself.
