Lawrence Osborne: The Ballad of a Small Player

The rain continued as if nothing had happened, and deep within myself I was sure that I would see her again, because although the city is a reef where the confused fish never meet twice unless a goddess intervenes, intervene she sometimes does. Solitude and loss are the rule, and years go by before one realizes it, but one can always meet a woman twice in a city. It’s not like living on the mainland, lost among the billions. There are hundreds of Dao-Mings, and thousands of Tangs, but a connection made is a connection never forgotten, or almost not forgotten, and one day, I was sure, I would once again find the girl who generously gilded the deer of Sando.

The following night at eight exactly, I put on my darkest suit and took the elevator down from the seventh floor of the Hotel Lisboa. It was the hour of the “second shift” in the world’s most profitable casino, and the revolving doors turned like turbines as crowds poured through them and hurled themselves toward the labyrinth of casinos scattered throughout the hotel. Seven million dollars a day in revenues and a pall of smoke that never moved, that hovered near the tops of the tangerine trees from which hung a thousand red New Year envelopes like venomous fruit. Smoke that hit the throat like sawdust mixed with powdered metal.

I went down to the hotel’s main mass-market casino, the Mona Lisa, where the games are endless in their diversity: pai kao, fanton, cussec , Q, and stud poker, and of course punto banco baccarat, that slutty dirty queen of casino card games. The boys brought me a cognac and sausage rolls, and I ordered a buttonhole from the street. Cut a figure, O my brothers, and have them believe that you really are a lord . But I lost again. I played fish-prawn-crab dice for an hour, forgetting myself completely, then moved off down the elevators to the Crystal Palace, which is like descending into an ice grotto. Waves of glass shards fall from the ceilings in shades of green and orange. A place where the rational mind comes apart. From there I navigated in total solitude to the Club Triumph and the Lisboa Hou Kat, a place that has a secretive feel to it, like a buried palace in Crete from the time of Linear B, with a circular room of leather sofas and tangerine trees with New Year envelopes. How can such places exist?

The hours passed. The money slipped away. A bead of sweat at the base of the spine, and my sweet vertigo. After a long losing spree I went back to my room to freshen up, then took the elevator down to the casinos for a second try. It was eleven and the night shift was just in. Brutal, cynical men with red faces and cheap suits, smoking continuously, their eyes little lusty slits that sucked everything in and spat it out again. On the ground floor they stood by the Throne of Pharaoh, a reproduction chair from Tutankhamen’s tomb, and a large vertical oil painting with its title provided: La Mère Abandonnée . A woman with a lyre sighing over a baby sleeping in a wheeled carriage. This scene of rural misery from nineteenth-century France did not arouse their curiosity at all, and they turned their backs to it as they waited for the elevators. They carried bags of gaming chips and cans of winter melon tea. Their breath smelled of oyster sauce. I bought a cigar in the underground mall and went back up to the VIP rooms, where Renoirs loomed on the walls. Here in the four innermost rooms the bets were a minimum of ten thousand up to a maximum of two million. Three plays at a time, usually. There was a separate entrance leading into the hotel to encourage the high rollers to roll right out of bed and into the VIP rooms with sleep in their eyes. Bright red armchairs had dropped out of the surrounding Alma-Tadema paintings of ancient Rome. Laughing maidens gamboling down flowery slopes. Air and light and lust. Scenes from the second century, or the first century, or the fourth century, or the never-never century. So many centuries reduced to a mural. So many centuries of pointless pleasure. And here the factory managers who had never read a book about Rome, much less visited, sat and lounged and tensed their minds as they threw themselves like disoriented moths against Luck’s candle flame. They didn’t know where they were. Eastwest.

Iplayed side baccarat for a while, and I was impressed by the way the staff brought me my supply of chips, like men stoking an engine fire in a train. I cheered up as my luck improved; I won three hands out of six. Four hundred back in. The myth paintings grew pinker as the hours went by. I became jolly again and won two hands more. I felt a stab of sadistic vitality.

With a modest profit I retired to the armchairs, in the décor of Paris 1900, and marveled at the gold mosaic floors of the elevators, which shone for a moment as the doors opened. I had made about $600 HK — it was nothing to brag about, but it wasn’t a loss. Peanuts add up.

An hour later I migrated back to the Crystal Palace, where the air was sweet and heavy with female perfumes. Teenage girls aplenty. Hong Kong men in blue suits. I lost it all and then some. It’s the way it goes, and I didn’t care. It was well after midnight by the time I got down to the new Sands and strode through that monumental hall whose din makes you feel mad and happy at the same time — not exactly the same time, but close.

I was feeling more reckless than I usually do, and the losses that I sustained on the slot machines did not serve to deter me from getting into deeper water. When did losses ever do that? I went to the first-floor buffet restaurant and sat there calculating my losses and my remaining reserves. The math was simple, but sliding. The fact was that after several months of playing the tables almost nonstop every night I had burned through the greater part of the money I had saved up over the years and had brought to Macau. A small fortune that had been supposed to last me a fair while, assuming that on average I would win almost as much as I lost, or maybe even more. But it had not worked out that way. It never does.

After a glass of Lello Douro, I made my way past the floor show and the Jade Monkey slot machines to the entrances of the separate private gaming rooms. I was guided by staff dressed in the yellow uniforms of the witch’s guards in The Wizard of Oz , who took me right to the door, assuming, I suppose, that I was a high roller. I was certainly tempted by the nearby roulette tables, with names like Lucky Seals and Fairy’s Fortune, but since I was now resolved upon risking a much bigger sum of money, I let myself be escorted upstairs to the Paiza Club, at that time the most exclusive private gaming room in Macau. Besides, everyone knows that roulette lends a 2.7 advantage to the house, no matter what you do. For baccarat it’s a mere 0.9.

The staff upstairs were in black and gold uniforms with gold buttons. I was surprised to hear that they already knew my name.

“Lord Doyle,” they said, swinging a welcoming hand toward the rooms called pits, which were arranged around a circular structure only half revealed by a luxurious dimness.

The atrium was cavernous, with a huge tasseled lantern suspended at its center. The style was very Chinese. Terra-cottas in niches and dragons everywhere. The world’s biggest chandelier, my escort said, indicating it with her hand. I was then given a choice of private rooms, some of them with fires in grates, bloodred panels, and gray tables. I chose a room where I could play against the bank alone with $10,000 HK hands.

I sat myself down there and waited for a bottle of wine to be brought up from the cellar. I took off my gloves and the banker bowed to me and announced his name, which was unusual. We relaxed into some anticipatory banter and then I was given my chips.