The Poker Report

2-7-02

"Questioning the Unquestionable Since 2001

It was a gunmetal dawn, a sky the color of unfired pistols. And rain. My head was bumping, there was a sound, at first I thought it was the phone ringing, but I had turned the phone off, or the stereo playing. When the sound became clearer it was first a whisper, and then a muffled groan, and finally Loser, the sound in my head was saying Loser.

It would be hard to look back on last night and say that I won money, but not impossible. I’ve won thirteen dollars so many weeks in a row I can’t even look back to the last time I was losing. Before last night I had considered myself a winner, but you can’t count on that. And the wolves, that had been traveling with the caravan, circled the old lady, who had cut her finger, their teeth wet and hungry.

When you win for awhile people are happy to see you go down a peg or two. I went down two last night playing Oklahoma high-low, eights or better, straights and flushes ride. I chased lows under the table, knocking my head on chair legs and floor panels. I couldn’t see past the shoes. I couldn’t seem to get a handle on that game, and the more I played the more I lost. And the more I lost the more I got thirsty, and that didn’t help me any.

The phone was ringing all night. Wilhelmina, calling from the East Bay while I searched hold ‘em hands for dueces. Some of the messages she left were sweet, I don’t know why I want to see you, she says, I just do. Others were not so sweet, You better answer your goddamned phone! Answer your phone! I haven’t answered my phone in weeks. Wilhelmina is a walking advertisement for caller ID.

So with the phone ringing and cards coming badly I kept drinking until I was into the 16 ounce Miller cans and my stack was nothing but pilfered pink, unpaid for, living off the houses bottomless credit, reaching into my own wallet when people chose to cash out. Like Jensen, who cashed out first, tossing his extra dimes to Wendy, Ben and Jon. All winners Then he looked at me down the ridge of his nose, beer can sitting in the cup holder, cell phone jumping like a tadpole in the card slot, and he looked like he was going to spit. He wasn’t going to toss a dime my way. No free money for losers is what he meant to say.

Then Cooney was leaving, looking to put his winnings down on a new tractor for his grandpappy. And Ben, the big winner, taking high low, Oklahoma and Texas, winning straight across that mottled gun toting horseriding oil drilling section of the country, the frontier where all of the games started, where men watched men shoot one another down on Main Street in front of the general store.

When I woke up this morning the phone was still ringing. Are you sleeping, her husky voice asked the answering machine, but answering machines don’t sleep. I went to the Zeitgiest for a bloody mary and a half a beer. Hair of the dog. And later, with Danielle to Ti Couz, and then a bookstore. I didn’t even bother to ask. Instead I just told Danielle of the time me and John had hitchhiked all the way to Las Angeles but never reached the ocean before turning around in a dirty section of East LA and being arrested in Las Vegas. And I almost told her what happened to John there but I didn’t want to ruin an otherwise pleasant story. Instead I let her go back to work, all of her, and I got on a bus going in the other direction, a 22. And I stopped once and died my hair green just to express my displeasure at this cold world that could let the kind of things happen that happen to people all the time. And when I got home it was seven at night and the news wasn’t even reporting on the bomb that was rumored to be in the Federal building at 10a.m on ABC. There was nothing then, just windows covered in rain and an interview in the morning.

- Stephen Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report