ALAN LELCHUK
611
white beach, palm trees, and seagreen water was still there, still beckoning.
And through the next hour and a half on my steady losing, the color photo
hatched itself into a project, or rather, hastened my earlier plan. And even
when, at the end, I picked myself up to go, a loser of nearly twenty-two
dollars, I felt something else stirring, something larger than the night's poker
game. I said goodnight to Bernie, who, a small winner, tried to offer consola–
tion. "Nah," I rejected it, "It's okay, just not my night, I guess,"
Rumbling home on the subway, I lost myself in Philip's terrrible descent
into disaster, thinking how maybe the timing was just right to read that book.
Above and across the aisle, Uncle Sam, wearing his high top hat of stars and
stripes, was pointing and inviting me to join the armed forces and see the
world. Good end, wrong means. A man had fallen asleep over his crumpled
Post,
and the woman next to him, yawning with the long day's fatigue, now
and then propped the man up on her shoulder delicately. For a fleeting mo–
ment I replaced Sam and his top hat with the gray fedora and oval face of
Mr. Barrett, who was peering down at me with a different, sterner message,
What was it, I wondered, leaning forward. And what was that deeper con–
fession he was about to make that day, but never did-aloud, anyway? The
IRT swerved suddenly and almost tossed me from my prickly seat,jolting
my reverie away, and I sat back, with new thoughts and my book. I read:
"Philip had few friends. His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a
need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless."
Was reading really so dangerous, I asked myself. Literature more slippery
say than reality?
On Friday next, after a week more of planning and reading, I returned
to Jackson's. An hour into the game, I was mired in the same pattern, losing
ground and my money quietly. I shooed the ladies away, Callie making a
face at me, and sipped my whiskey. Down to my last few dollars, I took a
shot with my three eights and raised the two high pair showing of Spats;
sure enough, he had just the two pair. Beginning with that hand and sizeable
pot, I turned my luck around. For an hour I got the cards, I had my run.
Three aces beating out Jackson's three kings (oh, that stung!). A full house
spoiling another player's flush. Pulling a seven for an inside straight in five
card. You know, the works. Oh it was running all right, and I was riding right
with it, not bothering with Callie's presence or Bernie's absence, not
distracted by pornography or Jim Beam, bad jokes or bad looks. Holding my
concentration fixed on the cards, remembering as best as I could all the cards
showing from that hand and from the deck's previous hands, I galloped on
that streaking horse. And before I knew it, I was hearing the grunts of the
players, seeing the expressions turn hostile, and feeling the piles of dough
climb and climb. One for singles, the other for fives, tens, and one twenty.
