I sat on the edge of the bed. I looked at my feet.
Kelly had my feet. A younger, softer version. We liked to sit together and admire each other’s feet. It was one of our special things.
I tried to feel tired. But it wasn’t sleep I needed. It was consolation. I sat at the computer. I cruised some porno sites. Chatted with a cyber whore. Thank the Lord for cable modems. She wore a silver sequined G-string. She had the handcuffs ready. She was my friend. She could give me what I wanted, she said.
It didn’t take too long to find out that it wasn’t true.
Enough of that. I’d get my consolation from the poker site.
I’d been flipping channels one night. I’d come across a poker show. The World Series of Poker. Binion’s Horseshoe. Las Vegas. Guys in shades. Mountains of chips. When the field got down to two, women in bikinis dumping piles of cash on the table.
Right away, I was hooked.
I’d read a bit, when I was young. Don’t open with less than two Jacks. That’s all I remembered. That was draw poker, anyway. Nobody played draw poker anymore. Too much skill. The better players always won. The lousy player had to win sometimes, to keep him coming back. The ideal game combines the right amount of luck and skill.
Texas hold’em has that balance. I don’t know who thought it up, or how it got the name, but the game is perfect. The strategy is deep enough that very few can play it really well. Long-term, the better player wins. But on any given hand, any given night, the luck is such that anyone can win. Dead money can play the ugliest of hands, bank his whole roll on an inside straight on the river, the last card dealt. And it would happen. He’d fill that straight. Bad beat, the other guy would tell himself, and anyone else at the bar, later, who would listen. It would happen often enough. Dead money could most naturally succumb to the delusion. That feeling of omnipotence that every card shark feeds on.
I sat down, logged on.
I played for hours.
I loved the rhythm of it. The back and forth. The artificial swish of cards being dealt. The click and clack of chips being bet. The site designers did a great, hypnotic job. Most of all I loved the charge you got from winning. The best was when you won with garbage cards. Nothing in the world like a bluff that worked. Two Three off-suit. Pick your spot. Play it like Aces. Watch the suckers fold. Take the pot. Yes.
I started with two hundred dollars. It went up. It went down. At one point I was all in, every cent I had in the pot on a heart flush draw. Five of hearts on the river. Bingo. Back to one-fifty. That was the start of the rush.
I rode the rush, and nothing mattered for a while. I ended up with fifteen hundred dollars. Every night as good as that, and I could quit my day job.
Yes. Now I could sleep.