Lawrence Osborne - The Ballad of a Small Player

“They don’t hate us.”

“Look at it, it’s just Vegas redux. Literally. They love it and we are suffering in it because we are ill.”

“Come on, have a drink. I’ll lend you.”

“You will? Bastard of truest joy! I knew you were a soft touch deep down, your lordship. Gotcha.”

“I am. I’m sentimental.”

I turned to the barman.

“Two Johnnie Walkers, no ice.”

We leaned on the bar and Yo Yo went off to dance somewhere. We were the unhealthiest-looking people there, because to Chinese punters the Venetian is the last word in swanky American glamour and respectability. Yes, respectability. It is smoke-free, orderly, spacious, and clean. They don’t fine you for spitting here, they throw you out. These Vegas establishments are the very opposite of their Chinese counterparts, which at least have retained the louche tolerance of ages past. The Vegas casinos are clean and overblown, with palatial dimensions and vacuumed carpets. They are as family-clean and bright as their originals in the Nevada desert, and in them the insalubrious aspects of gambling are put to the back of one’s mind. The gambler here is a child in a playground diverted by toys and games. The Venetian is the world’s largest casino, and its baccarat tables are set in columned halls with fountains and frescoed ceilings and cypress trees. Parts of it are like a Baroque church, with glasslike marble floors. Painted cupolas, awed crowds, floodlit capitals. Adrian liked to come here because it impressed his dates, and because he could walk them around the real-sized campanile. A place where dreams are realized, the executives have always said, and Adrian seemed to take them at their word. He liked the Bellini and the bar we were in now, the Florian, under the escalators leading up to the Grand Canal Shoppes, and I imagine that he spent hours here sipping Chivas Regal and mulling the disasters that awaited him at the innumerable tables nearby. One’s demise is always a spectacle. He looked slightly flustered now as he drained his Black Label and eyed the human glow of the tables, where a crowd worthy of the Colosseum was assembled. He was defeated for the night and yet his animal spirits had been revived by the promise of a sudden gift from my pocket.

“Look here,” he said, in his grubby private-school way, the locutions of the past revived in the East without fear of mockery, “how much can you make it tonight? The lads say you made three million at the Hou Kat Club. Very handy. You can be philosophical.”

“It’s not true, but I can spare you three thousand.”

“Three thousand Hong Kong? That’s barely three hundred fifty U.S. You can do better than that.”

“It’s what I have on me. Besides it’s for your own good. You’ll lose it in thirty minutes.”

“Will I? Says who?”

“I know.”

“Yes, you’re quite the bloody expert now, aren’t you? But it’s just luck, Doyle. There’s nothing mystical about it.”

“I could make it four thousand.”

He squinted and bit his lower lip.

“I have another idea,” he said quietly. “What if you lend me the money and then play it for me?”

“What?”

“You heard. What if you play the hand for me and then give me the winnings. Okay, I’ll give you a ten percent cut. That’s fair.”

I laughed in his face.

“No need to laugh, old man.”

His voice was bitter and unstable.

“That’s a mad scheme, Adrian. Downright insolent. But you know what? I’m going to accept.”

“You are?”

His face lit up with satisfaction.

“Yes, I’m going to accept because it’s just so humiliating to you that I can’t resist. But if I lose the hand you have to pay me the ten percent of whatever we lose.”

“Balls,” he spluttered.

“Take it or leave it.”

He chewed it over while laboring through a second drink, then said, reluctantly, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll do it as a favor to you.”

“A favor?”

“Yes. Since you’ve been a gentleman about it, I don’t mind doing it just this once. I’m showing confidence in you, don’t you see? I’m accepting it as a way of saying thank you.”

“It’s sweet of you, Adrian.”

“Can we make it five percent, though?”

“Ten. But you know I’ll win.”

He licked his lips uncertainly. When money is the only thing that bonds two men together, this is what happens. Everything becomes symbolic. Human relations boil down to their rotten core.

“You don’t say anything about it to Yo Yo, understand?”

“I have one question, Adrian. If you play everything and I lose it, what will you pay the ten percent with?”

“Ah, bastard of you. So I have to keep a bit back?”

“It would be prudent or you’ll lose a comrade.”

“I could pay you back next week.”

“Adrian, we don’t say things like that. You have what you have now. You don’t have a pot to piss in otherwise.”

His pride was stung and he swore, stepping back and bumping inadvertently into the bar.

“Got me by the balls, have you? I have the wedding ring. It’s worth two thousand U.S.”

I clicked my fingers to the barman.

“Two more, boss. No ice. How pissed shall we get, Adrian?”

“Bloody pissed.”

“All right, one more down the hatch and then we’ll go play.”

“Bastards,” he said broodily, shaking his head. But to whom was he referring? “I got a ring from Cartier and she threw it in my face. Those were the days. The little bitch. But I have the ring. I can pawn it. I’m not down and out with a ring like that in my pocket.”

“No one stays with anyone forever,” I said to comfort him.

“Yeah, but that bitch was one of a kind. She took every penny I had.”

“She left you the ring.”

“It’s a good ring, but I’m saving it for a rainy day.”

Isn’t this a rainy day? I thought. A day of downpours.

We set off into the wilderness of a thousand tables. I was feeling wild myself, and I wanted to do something fine for this declining man who had so little to cling to in his life outside his addiction. We came to a table in the center of the floor where a group of Hong Kong girls were losing their money with good humor and Adrian, attracted by the energy of the opposite sex, sat himself down emphatically among them, though with a melancholy invisibility. He then got up and gave the seat to me, remembering our arrangement.

“It feels lucky to me,” he whispered. “I can feel the vibe.”

The bankers didn’t recognize me, nor I them. Adrian stood behind me as a spectator and we both felt like a team of some kind. I split his money into three bets, much against his will, and played the first hand with a calm that transmitted itself to the girls. They calmed down as well and began to play more seriously. It was a quick hand with the highest wagers turning the cards first, according to tradition. Adrian craned over my shoulder to see what was happening, and when I turned a baccarat , a zero, he gave a start and muttered a quiet “Fuck!” I leaned back and felt ecstatic. So it was over at last. My run had run out — and never had that curious phrase seemed more appropriate. Luck indeed was like something that runs and then grows a little tired, and then falls down from exhaustion.

I turned to Adrian and shrugged, and he had to yield the ten percent we had agreed on.

“Shall we go on?” I asked.

It was a dilemma for him, I could see, and not one that he wanted to find himself in. It’s me , he was thinking, it’s me and my filthy luck. I can’t get away from it .

“One more by you,” he said at last. It was worth a try.

“Fine,” I said coolly.

He gripped the back of the chair. I turned a two and a three, and was beaten handily by a girl at the far end of the table.