‘I would have if you hadn’t staked me that extra ten grand. Thanks for the confidence.’
‘Well shit, I wouldn’t have much of an opinion of myself as a teacher if I didn’t think you could hold your own in a little pissant game like that. Besides, you caught Froggy’s tell about ten minutes after I did. You might be relying a shade heavy on odds, but I suppose that’s my fault. Just remember that if you’re playing Russian Roulette, one chamber loaded out of six, about seventeen percent of the time you’re going to be dead. Technically, you know, you lost our side bet when I broke you, because if I hadn’t extended more credit, you’d be washing windows with your tongue. Now you have enough money of your own to do as you please. If you run short, you can play my money any time.’
But Daniel, with his sixty-five hundred dollars profit, played his own, and he played it well. At the end of a year he had almost two hundred twenty thousand dollars, eighty thousand from a single pot in a Seven-Stud game in Albuquerque, beating Dumpling Smith’s four nines with a low straight flush in diamonds. Between games, as they traveled the circuit (what Bad Bobby called hard-assing the highway), Bad Bobby critiqued Daniel’s play. Aside from the lack of polish and occasional lapse in judgement, he saw only one major flaw. It wasn’t so much a repeated mistake as it was a general disposition – Daniel liked to gamble. He was seduced by the needle-thrill of action, the excitement and hope and abandon.
Bad Bobby told Daniel that a friend, a famous stock-car driver, had told him what he considered the greatest danger of racing: ‘“When you’re driving hard out on the edge, and the love of speed comes over you so true and deep and real, you don’t want to slow down. You know you ought to. But you’re locked into something so awesome and consuming you can’t back off. It’s always the same – the faster you go the less you care about being able to stop. Ever.”
‘And that’s bad shit, Daniel. Don’t step in it.’
But to sustain the high, thin edge of concentration gambling required was costly in itself. Along with the constant travel, there were days without sleep, an almost constant isolation from the natural world, adrenalin solos dancing on the blade. Against the discontinuities of the gambling life, Daniel developed portable routines. He read the paper with breakfast to remind himself daily there was a world beyond the cardtable. He took a long bath before every game. He wore, interchangeably, ten identical white shirts. The routines gave him a sense of stability, of a quotidian infrastructure that could survive the winds of chance. Occasionally he wanted a woman, and most often she was a five-hundred-dollar call girl. Daniel liked call girls. They were adventurous, usually independent, often beautiful, took pride in their erotic charms and understanding, and there were no complications.
Daniel agreed with Bobby’s claim that the simple life was essential if you hoped to sustain the ferocious concentration cardplaying demanded. Bad Bobby practiced extreme simplicity. Besides the restored ’49 Caddy, his worldly possessions were his father’s straight razor and an old Ruger .38 that ‘Jack-’Em-Up’ Jackson had given him to discourage cheaters and highwaymen. Bad Bobby slept and bathed in hotels, ate in restaurants, and bought new clothes when he was tired of the ones he was wearing. He also bought books – he was studying history – but when he finished one he either passed it along to Daniel, if he was interested, or left it for the room’s next occupant and the vagaries of chance.
After fifteen months of steady playing, Daniel became restless and vaguely depressed. They were halfway into their Lo-Ball swing through northern California, and the familiar land forms reminded him of the clear balance of ranch life. Gambling also had its balance, but it was forever shifting, erratically brilliant. He was bored with the game. He’d learned what he could, and it left him strangely dissatisfied. He told Bobby he wanted to move on.
Bad Bobby wouldn’t let him. ‘I’ve spent over eighteen months working with you, and I’m not done because you’re not ready.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve learned a lot. But I’m beginning to burn out.’
‘Daniel, that’s just when you learn things you’d never know otherwise. It’s that long, precise discipline that holds it together when it wants to fly apart. That’s when you develop some bottom to yourself, but you’ve got to be tough. You’ve got to patiently practice what you don’t enjoy if you want to make yourself a whole player. Like a wide receiver who’s the best there is going long, but who stays after practice every day and works on those three-yard outs that he has trouble with. That’s why they invented dues, Daniel – to pay ’em.’
Daniel sighed. ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, but I can quit any time I want. Don’t make me do it.’
‘Actually,’ Bad Bobby grinned, ‘you can’t quit whenever you want, ’cause I got it on your honor that you have to beat me in a gambling game to call your own shots.’
‘Fine,’ Daniel shrugged. ‘Tomorrow. Five-Card Stud.’
‘You chose your strongest game, even if your timing is off. I just got a call from Stan Wurlitzer down in Gardena. Seems both Guido Caramba and Rupert the Limey are in town, and there’s heavy sentiment developing for a hundred-thousand-dollar freeze-out game if Stan can put it together. I’m supposed to let him know by tonight.’
‘How’s it set up?’
‘Everybody buys a hundred thousand, and you play till somebody has it all. You lose your buy-in, you’re eliminated; no second buys.’
‘The game?’
‘Lo-Ball Draw, exactly like we’ve been playing the last coupla weeks. I personally think Lo-Ball will eventually be your best game, because a big edge in that game is hitting it on the come and playing power position.’ Course, this will be no limit, and you don’t want to be raising too much to draw cards.’
‘Are you suggesting I could play in a game like that?’
‘That’s up to you. I’m sure going to, so I don’t really want to waste my energy whipping on you tomorrow. But here’s a proposition: If you win the freeze-out, you’re free to go. If you don’t, you’ll still have enough money left to take a shot at me later.’
‘Knowing your propositions, I assume the other players will be good.’
‘You got that right.’
‘So, if I’m the winner, I not only get to leave, but I take eight hundred thousand dollars with me.’
‘It’d be nice to tip Stan ten grand or so for holding the stakes and letting us use his facilities – unless, of course, you don’t mind being known as a no-class tight-ass.’ Daniel started to defend his tipping – generous by most standards, though hardly equal to Bobby’s extravagance – but Bobby rolled right over him. ‘’Course, you’re long odds to win. You’ve got to beat seven other players, and they include Guido, Rupert, and me. My advice is to start early and bring extra grub.’
Daniel had known Bad Bobby long enough to sense a proposition. ‘What are you laying now?’
‘Even money you don’t make the final four. Your eight to my one that you’re exactly the third player eliminated. And twenty to one you don’t win it.’
‘You’re hurting my confidence.’
‘Can’t help it. Real is real, and I call ’em like I see ’em. And what I see is that you’re a damn good player, but not good enough yet.’
They were sitting in Daniel’s room at the Eureka Inn. Daniel pointed at the phone on the desk. ‘Call this Stan guy and reserve two seats. And I’ll take a grand on the first two propositions, and five on the twenty to one that I win it all. So then you’d be out two hundred thousand plus change, and I’d be on my own.’
Bad Bobby gave a number to the operator. He grinned at Daniel. ‘You’ll love Guido. He’s a character-builder all by himself.’
The next morning, they left for San Francisco. As Daniel drove, Bad Bobby analyzed the players and discussed the strategy of no-limit Lo-Ball freeze-out. It would be a full game, eight players. There were only two Bobby hadn’t gambled with before.