Lawrence Osborne - The Ballad of a Small Player

I was stopped at the doors by two managers who had clearly been told to look out for me. They were all toothpaste-ad smiles and handshakes, smooth as razor wire and metal to the core.

“Lord Doyle, how nice to see you! Is that a bag full of money?”

“It is indeed,” I replied, swinging it with dash. “I had a whim,” I said. “I’ve been away from the tables far too long, and it’s time I played a hand or two. You know how it is.”

“We’re glad to hear it, Lord Doyle. One minute, please.”

One of them spoke into a walkie-talkie.

“Would you like a private room?” the other one then said, as they let me in, walking on either side of me. “We can arrange it.”

“Not necessary. I like a crowd.”

But we don’t , they implied.

“Very well,” they said. “We understand that it adds to the enjoyment of the game.”

“I like to show off, I guess. I’m an old-fashioned exhibitionist. Especially when I lose. Imagine that.”

“We have many high rollers like that, Lord Doyle.”

“Do you? I wouldn’t call myself a high roller exactly. I’m more like a low roller. A low rolling stone covered with moss and pigeon shit.”

They tried to laugh at a joke they didn’t get. I noticed they wore the same cuff links that Mr. Souza wore: black dice.

“Should we count the money? Most of our high-rolling clients insist on it.”

“Sure, count it if you feel like it. Mind if I have a cigar?”

They pulled out a huge Havana before I could make a move. It was clipped and lit in a jiffy.

“Thank you very much. I’ll sit here while you count.”

They went into an adjoining room and returned in ten minutes. A slip of paper was handed to me with the exact sum written on it.

“Satisfactory,” I said. “It’s the same total I came to myself.”

“Naturally it is.”

They bowed.

A waitress in a long, slitted cocktail dress appeared, her face heavily made up. She asked me in Chinese if I’d like a complimentary glass of champagne before I sat at the table.

“Very kind of you. I’ll drink it here.”

I sat on the heavy Louis XV armchair and sank back into its satin upholstery. The minders bowed again and said that when I had selected my table they would bring the chips to it.

“Fine. But I have one question. I know you have a minimum bet of ten thousand here. What if I bet two million? You know that I am permitted only one hand.”

“We are aware of that, Lord Doyle.”

“Then I need to know if there is a maximum bet.”

This seemed not to have occurred to them.

“I am not sure,” one of them muttered. “I will call Mr. Souza.”

“You do that. I’d like to know.”

“May I ask why?”

“It’s occurred to me that I might bet the whole lot on one hand.”

“Lord Doyle?”

“You heard me. The whole lot on one hand.”

“But Lord Doyle, that is quite crazy.”

They laughed at once to offset the possibly injurious implications of such a remark.

“Not,” the speaker amended, “that I am suggesting you are crazy.”

“What if I were crazy? It doesn’t matter as long as you permitted the bet.”

“That is true. I was not implying that it would be to our advantage if you bet everything. But I must say, it is. Are you prepared to lose everything?”

“That’s my business. Let’s say I am.”

The conversation with Mr. Souza took some time. The waitresses brought me some complimentary chocolates and I thought for a moment of Dao-Ming and her lovely offering at the Intercontinental. It was a full night and the rooms were smoky, loud, and claustrophobically tense. I heard imprecations and curses from inside the pits, and tightly clustered crowds shouting at a lucky hand. My skin grew cold and prickly. My tongue dried out. Insomnia and dehydration again. Yet again I was going to skin them alive, and if it happened that they skinned me it would be even better. Thus is the yin and yang of the punter’s pleasures. Skinning and being skinned are the same. You get to be sadist and masochist not just in the same day or night, but in the same moment. There is something lordly about it after all.

I was on my third glass when one of the gentlemen returned. His look was noticeably apprehensive and he cleared his throat behind a clenched fist before telling me that Mr. Souza had approved the bet.

“I hope, however, that I can persuade you not to make it, Lord Doyle. You have won an enormous amount of money at our tables and in my opinion you would do better to leave with it all now.”

“Leave? But I’m just getting started.”

“Forgive me, but you cannot be serious. There is only so much you can win from a casino. I would say that you must have reached that limit.”

“I don’t feel the same way at all. I feel like I am just setting out on my streak of luck.”

“Lord Doyle?”

“You know how extravagant we lords are.”

“I remember Mr. Souza saying something about that.”

“We are complete zanies.”

He stiffened.

“But Lord Doyle, you stand to lose every last kwai , every last dollar. In one bet. Is that rational?”

“What do I care if it’s rational? Nothing in life is rational. Life isn’t rational. It’s animal.”

“Oh?”

He looked highly concerned; his tone implied doubt.

“But Lord Doyle, we have to be rational sometimes.”

“Do we?”

I knocked back the last of the champagne.

“Is Grandma rational? Is Mr. Souza?”

“I couldn’t say. They try to be.”

“Is Guan Yin?”

“Please, keep your voice down. We can’t mention that name in a loud voice.”

“I have decided to be completely superstitious at last, to trust in the winds. I’ve made up my mind.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Maybe you are. But then again you might win it all back. You must be at least slightly tempted by that outcome?”

“We’re only human.”

An unfortunate phrase , I thought.

I got up, shedding a flurry of ash crumbs around me.

“It wasn’t my idea to have one last hand. It was your idea.”

We moved in pantomime toward the private rooms where the safety-pin millionaires were suffering at the hands of the goddess who was not listening to them. My floor manager made signs to the dealers to stop their motions, and we inspected room after room until I had found the table I wanted. There were six players already there, and it was explained to them that I would be placing an astronomical bet on the table. The buzz went out at once and soon the table was full. I sat at one end and my chips were piled up in front of me. The others were high rollers in their own right, hard men from the southern cities, and there was no mawkish voyeurism in the way they eyed up my pile. They were simply calculating what might be raked in if that amount were put in play. At that moment, however, the second manager came quietly into the room and explained that the table was now closed to everyone except me. They got up, therefore, and filed out with a few incendiary words. The door was closed and the managers remained. I asked for another glass of bubbly and a bowl of nuts. The dealers asked me politely if I spoke Chinese, and I said I would prefer to game in Mandarin, if that was all right with them. We settled down and I noticed a subtle change in the air, as if the air-conditioning had been turned up or the filters enhanced. I felt a little giddy with the alcohol. The manager then leaned toward my ears.

“Lord Doyle, there is a gentleman who would like to play against you. His name is Mr. Cheng. He has asked us specifically. Would you accept?”

I turned and saw an ancient high roller in a Savile Row suit coming through the door with a handkerchief pressed for a moment against his mouth and a look of dour hunger in his eye. TB? He was about seventy, immensely wealthy from the looks of him, and he had come in quietly. He bowed to me and we shook hands. Mr. Cheng from Hong Kong, billions in the bank, and billions out of it, too. I said “Welcome” in Mandarin and he sat at the other end of the table, offloading a sack of chips onto the table’s surface and then locking his fingers together and flexing them. We exchanged some pleasantries. Mr. Cheng asked me if it was true that I’d stake my entire pile on a single bet.