Calvin Baker - Grace

It was soon rush hour so I took AirTrain. The train was at the platform when I arrived, and whisked me to Jamaica Station, where I caught the LIRR to Atlantic Avenue. There I found a cab, but was thwarted by traffic near the Brooklyn Bridge. I asked the driver to leave me at Fulton Ferry, where I picked up the first water taxi of the season, and made it across the gray river in the fluttering snow.

The empty apartment needed dusting, but was otherwise as I left it. I poured myself a glass of water, which was the only thing in the refrigerator, set a kettle to boil, and went to shower.

When I returned to the kitchen I ground coffee beans, which I measured into a filter and bloomed with a bit of the water before pouring the rest slowly over them for three minutes. I finished my coffee, unpacked my luggage, and stored it away.

That evening I ordered a movie in English over the computer, and American dinner over the phone, and ate my meal as I watched the movie, and drank a nightcap of Kentucky bourbon.

When I went to sleep I was happy to be in my own house and not some strange shore for the first time in months, and snug with my own comforter around my shoulders, in my own bed, and to fall asleep dreaming American.

By midweek, though, I was aware only of the emptiness of the rooms, an incompleteness that stayed with me until Sylvie arrived a few weeks later.

I was curious to meet her friends, and pleased to find I got on with them without undue effort. But by week’s end she was spent from the city, and happy to get away when we headed west, under the great sky again.

Other than Davidson and Elsa, we were joined by Ingo, one of the film’s backers, Ingo’s fiancée, Ola, who worked at a bank in London, and Gabriel, a cinematographer, and his wife, Renata, a famous Hungarian dancer and beauty.

Everyone besides me was an accomplished skier. I had planned the trip mainly because I thought Sylvie would enjoy it, and was glad to see she did. The snow was fresh and powdery; the mountain not too crowded; and when I fell, as I took my first lesson, I learned to take it in stride.

“Your ski edges are set at ninety degrees from the factory,” Sylvie consoled me when I grew frustrated. “Mine are bent to eighty-eight degrees. It makes it easier to carve the powder.”

“Yes, that is why.”

“Don’t worry, you will get better.”

“How long do you think it will take before I can go off trail?” I joked, after falling down again.

“You’re so sweet in the country. But I’m afraid you’ll never be a good skier.”

“Because I started too late?”

“No, because you don’t love it. You’ll plateau, and lose interest.”

“We will have to find another hobby, then.”

“Diving. Bookbinding. Cooking. Gardening. Tango. Would you take up tango with me?”

“We will do it all.”

“But what happens when we lose interest?”

“We will find new things.”

“What if we run out?”

“We will be happy and old by then. Don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

The third evening we were at the bar in the lodge, playing pool with a group of locals, who lived all season on the mountain and were telling the others about the best trails. We had dinner in town that night, and afterward were in such high spirits we decided to drive to the casino on a nearby reservation.

We left in two cars under the Easter moon, over the empty roads, through the darkness in the country with nothing but the white headlights reflecting back off the white snow, blue evening stillness, and the wine-dark forest against the twilight.

When we neared the casino red and orange neon lights burst through the darkness to meet us on the highway, breaking the spell of a lunar landscape, but transfixing us with how tawdry they had made that part of the wilderness.

“It all seemed so innocent before,” Ingo remarked, unhappily. “Like the America one imagines.”

“It was a way of bringing hard currency to a poor country,” Gabriel told him. “They did not know what came with it.”

“What is the difference between innocent and ignorant, anyway?”

“Ignorant means not knowing. Innocent is intending no harm.”

“Ah, so they overlap, and pull apart, as in our language.”

We were on the casino floor. Renata and Gabriel had never been in a casino before, and looked around with superior awe, the way Europeans always try to condescend to Americans in the heart of the country. As we fanned out toward the tables, the others tried to egg them into gambling, which they refused.

Davidson and Elsa were dressed to the nines, elegant as always, even amid the whirling slot machines, with everyone else in ski vests and blue jeans, as the speakers piped in Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell.

We settled down to the roulette wheel in pairs, playing alternately the red or the black, so none of us was up or down very much, and as a group we were not leaving too much behind. Davidson and Elsa grew bored with the small stakes, though, and put a pile on seven, which they lost. They bet another stack on four, and lost that, too. Ingo and Ola were calculating the odds, which they did not like, and did not deviate from their calculations, win or lose, so did not move too far up or down. Neither did we, leaving the only excitement in watching Davidson and Elsa blow their chips in spectacular fashion.

After an hour, Sylvie and I were up a hundred, but the game had grown tedious, and she wanted to raise the stakes. “May I?” She took a chip from our stack.

She bet a street on her birthday, and then a corner on our two birthdays, and we lost both. Next, she went with her number, which was not the dealer’s, and so we lost fifty bucks in short order. We were still up fifty, and it was fun, so she took half what was left and played the centerline. We lost again.

“I am blowing all our money,” she said, as she took another chip.

“How are we betting the final one?” I asked, as she placed the last of our winnings.

She played it straight up on the day we met, and the dealer spun. The ball jumped up and the ball jumped down and the ball spun over the wheel, as our eyes followed the damn thing, projecting our desire and superstition, losing our money but having a blast.

Davidson and Elsa hit, and the croupier paid them out thousands, which was a nice pile of chips that they put right back on the table.

“Our dear friends are rich,” said Ingo.

Sylvie and I were down to what we started with, and Sylvie did not want to bet more, but we were having so much fun I insisted. She took it and played another street, but wouldn’t tell me what it signified, and the dumb little ball danced over the big dumb wheel, and we laughed with merriment and joy when one of her numbers fell.

“Look, we won everything back,” she said. “Let’s stop now.”

“What did you bet?” I asked.

“Isn’t it crazy,” Sylvie replied, “how the brain looks for meaning, and looks for meaning, even where you know there is none.”

“So you bet?”

“I’m not telling, you. You would know too much.”

“Well, we are lucky,” I said.

“We are lucky,” she said.

“It’s randomness,” Gabriel chimed in.

“We were having a moment.”

We turned back to the table, where Davidson and Elsa had let everything ride again, and lost it all again.

“Our dear friends are poor.” Ingo shook his head with exaggerated sadness.

They went further down from there, and wanted to play a new game with less chance. Sylvie went to cash out our chips. Ola went with her to find the others, who had wandered off. Ingo and I went with Davidson over to the poker tables to keep an eye on him, as he settled in against the dealer.

“When you were up thousands, why didn’t you take some chips off the table?” I asked, after he had cut the cards.