Lawrence Osborne - The Ballad of a Small Player

“Oh, we’re flying now!” she roared.

She turned to the staff.

“Get me thirty thousand in chips.”

“Thirty thousand, Grandma?”

“You heard what I said, you morons. Do I look like I fumbled a zero?”

The chips came over. Like Soviet tanks facing a defenseless German village.

“Come on, your lordship. Open your credit line.”

I didn’t have one, of course.

The bankers laughed it off.

Grandma looked around the room.

“He doesn’t have a credit line?”

“I prefer not to,” I said.

“What kind of gambler doesn’t have a credit line? I thought every gwai lo had a credit line.”

“Not me.”

“How rotten. If you lose we can only play two hands.”

“I’ll win.”

She smiled lasciviously and tapped my arm with her folded glasses.

“You have a system,” she said.

“I’m not using one. If I were—”

“You’re suckering me in. It’s the oldest trick in the world.”

She said she didn’t care either way. Money was cheap, common as earth. It always returned to you, like bathwater.

We played; I won a modest hand.

“Oh,” she cried. “You suckered me in.”

After a while, she said, “It’s quite clear that you’re using some system, I don’t know what. I can’t even imagine what system one would use with a game like this. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Shall we go a little higher?” I said.

It was madness but I had to take her down a notch. She was becoming insufferable.

“A little higher, your lordship?”

“High as you like.”

The banker tried to dissuade me.

“Sir, we can keep the bets moderate.”

Grandma reacted strongly.

“Shut up, you idiot. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.”

His eyes were slightly panicked.

“Sir, it’s as you wish.”

“I can match Grandma.”

Fuck Grandma , I wanted to say.

“See?” Grandma snapped.

“Put whatever you like up to four thousand,” I said.

“And they tell me you are a lord as well. A lord. The last time I saw you, as I remember, you were at that shabby place Greek Mythology. Of course I was there, too, I admit. It’s sometimes a good place, isn’t it? We shared a merry look. It sometimes coughs up a bit of profit. But as I recall, you were with a young girl. Or she picked you up. Yes, that’s it. She picked you up right at the table. All they have to do is bat their eyelashes at you.”

I poured her another glass, and then myself. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I even thought of lying to her about my system. First I was a lord, then I had a system; it was as if they were inventing me as they went along. The absurdity of the process was external to me, and so I let it carry me along for a while. And so I tried to seem calm and nonchalant as I placed the entirety of my chips on the table.

The bankers tensed.

Grandma took off her earrings and placed them in her handbag. A superstition thing. I watched the spatula move and there was a faint din in my ears, a white noise that came not from the room or from the people in it but from myself. I was dead certain that I would win right then, because I needed to win and therefore there was no question of not winning. My heart was in my mouth, beating in an unusual way, missing beats, leaping erratically, and the edges of my eyes had become glutinous and sticky. You fucker , a voice rose inside me, you stupid fucker. Hurtling down into the pit with the worms . I held back my spit and kept my eyes in their sockets and the blade turned a six for me and an eight for Grandma, and in the twinkling of a blind eye I had lost it all. The light went out in my mind and I gripped the edge of the table.

“Grandma takes all,” the banker said.

I turned to her and offered a grim congratulation.

“Thank you, young man.”

She scraped together the chips and had the boys bag them.

“I suppose,” I said, “I should be getting home.”

She lit a cigarette as if to refresh herself. “Home? What kind of man goes home?”

“A defeated one.”

“Nonsense. There’s no one else for me to play with.”

“But I have to go home. I have to get drunk.”

“You can get drunk here. Or else, go home and get some more money and I’ll wait for you. Right here at this table.”

I got off my stool and the legs were rubber.

That’s a crazy idea, I thought. A wonderful idea.

“Will you?” she said gaily.

Home in this case was only an elevator ride away. I passed the Throne of Tutankhamen, in which a factory boss was half asleep with a beer in his hand, eyes trained upon The Abandoned Mother . The corridors were alive with transactions, with sloe-eyed girls. But I went straight to my safe and pulled out the hundred grand. I didn’t bother with an envelope. I was astir like a guitar string. My face was bloodless in the bathroom mirror. I told myself not to go out again, to pour myself a vodka and stop right there, sit on the bed and leave the dough alone. And I did so for five minutes. I thought of going downstairs to reception and settling up at least seventy percent of my outstanding bill, which would allow me to stay on for a couple more weeks without being ejected. A couple more weeks with a roof over my head. How quickly the whole thing had come crashing down around my ears. I had miscalculated everything in a fit of prolonged pleasure. Now I had only this last hundred thousand, and that wasn’t much, it was certainly not enough, but even so I was going to spend it at the New Wing because I couldn’t not spend it, I couldn’t stop the electric flow of my own irresponsibility. I’ll win , I thought. It’s fifty-fifty. I’ll win and I’ll come home and have a bath and pay my bill in the morning. I’ll cover myself in glory and be absolved .

It became such a certainty that I didn’t even need the mini-bottle of vodka I downed to steady my nerves. I went back to the New Wing in a cold state of mind, as if a meter were running inside me and clocking up lists of numbers that tabulated and measured my intensity of purpose.

Grandma was waiting for me. By now she was high on her fizz, and the boys were bringing her oysters with toothpicks. She looked a tad more blowsy.

“There you are,” she drawled. “What kept you?”

“I’m a slow walker.”

I held my dough as a kind of loose paper ball that I had to proffer with two hands, like garbage.

“All of it, sir?”

“All of it.”

“That’s better,” Grandma said. “Settle down.”

I did settle down. I unruffled my heart.

“Now we’re all comfy,” Grandma went on, “we can get down to some playing. I’ve been bored stiff waiting for you. And I hate being bored.”

“Very well.”

I put on my yellow gloves.

“I’m ready,” I said. “Ready as steel, as my father used to say.”

“Play,” Grandma barked at the banker.

The shoe went into action after I had placed half my pile on the first bet. I couldn’t say why I did it. I was just starting to feel lucky, and one knows when Luck is approaching. I lost. Grandma ordered another bottle, and we waited for it to be opened and dispensed before continuing.

“I love losing,” she said lightly. “When I was angry with my husband once, I took him to Hong Fak and I lost five hundred fifty thousand in ten minutes. You should have seen the look on his face. It made my year.”

I should have divided the remaining fifty thousand into two piles and bet them separately, but somehow this would have meant losing face in front of Grandma, and there was something about her that made this absolutely impossible. It would have been tantamount to committing moral suicide.