Colson Whitehead - The Noble Hustle - Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death

I heard a song, they were playing it in the store, a slow piano tune. There was a TV screen on the wall above the T-shirts, and I saw they were running a loop of the Bellagio dancing water, shot from a helicopter at night, and the music was “Clair de Lune.” Courtesy of the Las Vegas Board of Tourism, I imagine.

“Clair” was a cheap date it turned out, the movie now part of the town’s mythology. I didn’t mind that my private notion had never been mine at all but a popular romance. I couldn’t own it. What would Johnny Moss, the first champion of the World Series of Poker, think of how his game had changed over the decades, as it transformed from an intimate competition among buddy-rivals into a multimillion-dollar international event, bigger than any single individual. If Johnny Moss walked into the Pavilion today and saw the thousands of players worrying their stacks, the tables upon tables of hopeful souls, heard the symphony of crickets, I think he’d say, Deal me in. It’s not mine, but it’s cards.

“Clair de Lune” in a Hudson News franchise was nice exit music from Vegas. It made me feel, how do I put this, good.

There’s always next year, right? What the heck, I’ll play the circuit, win some tournaments, and come back. Palm Beach. New Orleans. Tunica. Never heard of Tunica, and maybe that’s a good thing. Return to Vegas. Make it to Day 3 this time, make it into the money, it will all work out. Maybe I’ll win, and they’ll play the national anthem of the Republic of Anhedonia in the Pavilion. I’ll stand on the stage in my track jacket, which is now decked out in rhinestones and flapping Vegas Gold fringes, place my hand over my heart (it would take some time to find it), and the speakers in the great hall will broadcast my homeland’s song, loud and clear so that everyone can hear it: “NYUH-GUH-UH! UH-GUUHH! NYUH-UGH UGH OH GOD NO NOT AGAIN SSSIIIGGGHHH!”

Try again. It was a very Bad News Bears thing to say. Scrappy. Inspiring.

Actually, fuck it.

I learned a lot of things during my long, bizarre trip. About myself and the ways of the world. One, do not hope for change, or the possibility of transcending your everyday existence, because you will fail. Two, if people put their faith in you, you will let them down. And three, everything is a disaster. In short, nothing I hadn’t known since childhood, but sometimes you can forget these things when engulfed by a rogue swell of optimism, which happens, if infrequently.

There was a fourth item, but I’ll save it for the kid, for when she’s older.

Colson Whitehead is the author of the novels The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, Sag Harbor , and Zone One . He has also written a collection of essays called The Colossus of New York . His work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, Harper’s, Grantland , and The New Yorker . A recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in New York City.