The Poker Report Goes To Las Vegas II

3/13/02

Deal Me In

I fly in to Vegas Wednesday night with Ben, Jon, Cooney, Sean, and Scott. We’re supposed to meet people, Donahue, Stassen, Steph Mann, Foxy, George Lowe, and twenty or thirty other Stanford Alum. My publisher is putting a small group of us up at the Hard Rock Cafe and the rest are staying where the chips land. I have no idea about the weekend ahead of us, the March Madness weekend. Nobody knows yet that Wyoming will beat Gonzaga or USC will lose in overtime. We don’t know anything about Scott falling forward in a dark club with three flutes of Champaign and slicing his arms open so his wrists look like shrimp cocktail or who I’m going to meet in a taxi line at Caesar’s Palace on Saturday afternoon.

My publisher, Dave, is at the craps table when we get there and he pushes me a five hundred dollar chip and we shoot craps for awhile and talk books and other good stuff. The Hard Rock is flash and glam, cocktail waitresses in leather shorts and fishnets. At the Hard Rock the girls are beautiful and for sale. The circle bar in the middle is a teeming mass of college testosterone. There’s no poker room here, the margins aren’t high enough. The Hard Rock doesn’t play poker, the Hard Rock plays rock and roll. Bet ten dollars minimum, back it up three times, let the dice fall, never take it the hard way.

3/14/02

Binions

I leave the bright lights and fast women of the Hard Rock Cafe for Binion’s Horseshoe ten O’clock Thursday morning.

Binions sits in the middle of downtown, miles from the strip. Inside is quiet, no music. Biscuits and gravy sausage for two dollars straight up. All the old men want Lucy’s attention. "Lucy," they say. "Can I have more coffee?" And she calls them all by name and she knows who wants a hamburger and who orders turkey on Thursday. The old guy in the light blue Members Only jacket says he went for a walk today. To the bank. Lucy says, "Did you get any money for me?"

The place smells of cigars and cheap everything. The men are here to play poker. Same as the day before and the day before that. For them I am egg salad on a roll. For me it was a twenty dollar cab ride from a Hollywood set into the dirty reality of the American dream.

They haven’t seen me before, and I’m young. But sixteen years ago during a hot desert summer I was driven past the street outside in handcuffs and I still remember the neon cowboy waving goodbye and what that pack of cigarettes tasted like at the bus station and what the cop said to me before heading back to the juvie detention center. He said, "Good luck."

Members Only says, "Pumpkin pie with a little whip." Lucy says, "You’re asking the wrong person for a little whip, ha ha ha."

I burn my extra card at the seven card table and beat two kings with two pairs. I fold on the third card four times and get made for a kid that gets pushed around. I play hard at three fives and take the biggest pot of the morning but you can’t win when you’re bored. I get beat on the next hand with a four card flush, spades showing on the table, pot odds say even money, call me a fool. But then I take two threes straight to the bank at five dollars a card and I feel good because I’m up in the most famous poker room in the whole world.

"Don’t die on me, I’ll get ya," the old man across from me says at the Hold ‘Em table. The guy in the plumber hat says about the waitress, "She’s so slow it takes her ninety minutes to watch sixty minutes. She’s so slow when I want cold tea I order hot tea because I know it’ll be cold by the time it gets here."

It takes three hours to win fifty bucks playing seven card stud one/five and one hand to drown it with two pair, aces over nines when a pro gets a pair of kings in the hole.

3/15/02

Nights Over Mornings

In the early morning there's something happening on the upper reaches of the Flamingo, The beds are covered, tables turned over. Not even the valets or cashiers know about room 25082 with its view of the Roman Empire, Jesus strung across its car lot, preparing to topple before the invading hoards.

Wyoming beats Gonzaga and I roll my bet onto Illinois. "Beer for breakfast?" George asks. Friday, I decide, is a new beginning. Last night I called Laura in Canada. She told me to start fresh. She asked me to wager ten dollars for her on the poker table. So I did, eighteen times. I asked her to mail me one-hundred-and-eighty-dollars. I tell her I’m sorry, that I love her, but she owes me money.

Last night I met Dave back at Binions and lost eighty dollars to a college kid with a mean Greek face. He bet on the river with eights in the hole and refused to fold on an ace two. He was playing the way that only works when the cards are coming. At one point I considered following him to the bathroom to give him a rabbit punch to the back of the neck. Before I could get up to follow him Dave came by and asked me how I was doing. I told him every hand I folded was the right decision. Dave had just won ten thousand dollars on craps and asked if I needed a roll of cash. I said he’d scare people at this table with that kind of money. Dave tipped the craps dealer five hundred dollars last night and we took a ride in Binion’s limo, tossing around stacks of bills in the back on the Las Vegas strip. Dave covered my losses plus and in the morning I tipped the Starbucks kid a five dollar chip. I said, "Make sure you play it." He said, "Don’t worry. I will. I’m gonna bet it."

Friday night I meet Cappy and Karina at the Flamingo. Karina is there and the old men are straining their heads at the blackjack table saying, "Who brought the candy?" The dealer in the poker room says, "Here comes my future ex-wife." We hang out and take pictures. I haven’t won a game of poker yet but I’m looking like a college basketball genius.

3/16/02

A Funny Thing Happened After I Got Out

Three in the morning the Flamingo is still pink and Fox and I head back to the Hard Rock.

It’s Friday night and Dave’s shoving hundreds on the craps table, one hundred on the pass line, five hundred behind. One hundred on the Come line, five hundred behind. But his luck’s still in San Francisco, and there’s a war on, and earlier he bought me a nice steak, a porterhouse, medium rare. So I bring him Foxy for luck, and first he gives her the dice, and then he gives her the chips. There’s hookers at the slot machines near the sportbook. The floor is crowded with madness. Ben and Jon are there. And I’m there. And I’m bored because I lost another eighty in a slow game of stud, one through five. Foxy walks away from the table. She's not bringing Dave luck. Not financially. But she’s worth whatever he lost, and he knows that.

I play a couple of turns with Dave’s stack while he stands behind the guy with the long face, cigar in his mouth, velour jacket. I win. I lose. I bet one hundred on the pass line. I back it up with five more. I play one hundred on the Come line. You always back your odds. You never bet the hard way. Life is hard enough. You never take the long road, they’re already cutting you for a percentage. I go up to twenty-five hundred, back down to five. The chips are my ocean. There’s hookers at the circle bar, the parking lot. Dave tells me to play it out. He’s going to sleep. Give him what’s left in the morning. I’m gambling proxy. Ben and Jon say shouldn’t you call it a night? I should. I’ll have a beer.

"Be careful with that nice man’s chips," Ben says. "He’s been nice to you."

"And us," Jon says.

Sometimes I think Ben and Jon only hang out with me to be closer to Dave. I tell them I’ll sleep soon. I’ll just go to the bathroom. Hang out for a bit. The sun is a glimmer off the Stratosphere, the light for darkened limousines. The sun is rising on the washed up gambling early morning lonely. "Never change places," Dave had said. "It’s not lucky." The dice went around and Ben and Jon were gone. Foxy was upstairs in my room sleeping, and she had the key. The rock and roll store with it’s souvenirs, still closed. The dice went round and the chips were my ocean. The guy to the left of the dealer threw a four. Bet a hundred on every roll. BACK UP EVERYTHING. Check your pockets. He rolled and rolled and my streets filled up. A fabulous burning city populated with five hundred dollar chips.

"Do you need anything?" the waitress asked.

"Fuck this," the guy next to me said, ten dollars sitting on a four. He didn’t back up anything. I considered calling security to have him removed. I was not going to leave my place. The table was filling up around me. My city was burning, every street covered. Occasionally an eleven or a three. My chips were an endless wave, an ever rising tide.

The shooter hit sixes for eons. A girl from Dallas stood next to me. She played ten, I covered her odds for her. "Always get your odds," I said. But she didn’t play the Come line and he wasn’t rolling fours. He was rolling sixes, and sometimes eights. When my black chips were spilling over Mary Lou paid me in five hundreds. And he kept rolling and sometimes I tossed twenty-five dollars to the shooter and he looked at me in this really serious way and said, "Thanks, man."

I confessed to the girl from Dallas that it wasn’t my money. "That’s a lot of money," she said. It was a lot of money. I was going to need a bucket. People started to notice.

"Hey," the guy with ten dollars on the four said. "You’re doing well for yourself."

"I’ve got every number on the board," I said.

And still the dice came. I gave Mary Lou fifty dollars. I put the girl from Dallas on the Come line. I backed her odds. I told her I was a writer and she said she’d really like to read my book. "I hope he doesn’t crap out," I told her. "I’ve got thirty-five hundred out there against a seven." And still he kept rolling. Rolling until the girl from Dallas had to leave to catch a plane. Rolling until the end when it was over and it sounded like every chip in the place fell all at once. There would be no more action.

"Do you want a hundred on the pass line?" the dealer asked. I told him I didn’t. The sun was everywhere outside now. Over the desert and its water, the hotel swimming pools and golf courses. Spreading between the grooves in the tires of all the parked cars and their sleeping passengers.

"Color me up," I said. I walked fifteen thousand in chips to the cashier but I only cashed for five thousand otherwise they were going to report me to the IRS. It was ridiculous. Jason was back at the ten dollar blackjack table and he handed me a beer. "It’s early," I told him and drank it. I would see what Dave would say in the morning. I had a hunch he would be surprised.

Things got strange after that. Fox and I took pictures rolling around on the bed covered in hundreds and yellow thousand dollar chips. I gave Dave his money while waiting for a cab to take him and Jeff to the airport. He flipped me two thousand for my troubles. Scott came in around noon, his arms open, held together with stitches and staples, palms up to the ceilings. When he knocked on the door Jon said it sounded like elbows.

I met Ross in front of Caesar’s Palace, waiting in the cab line and a bright haze had filtered through the Nevada horizon. It had been years since I’d seen Ross and I had never really liked him. Still didn’t. I asked him how everyone was and he told me. He said if I ever got to L.A. I should look him up. I would never look him up. That would never happen.

Inside at the sports book the food court was filled. We were there in bunches. Donahue, Stass, Alvarez, Karina, Foxy, Ben, Jon, George, Rowen, Tom, others. I bought a round for everybody because I had money in every pocket and told Foxy, "What good is money if you can’t buy friends?"

"Are you being facetious?" she asked.

"No," I told her. "I’ve always believed that."

Stanford lost to Kansas in a route, Cooney called it the easiest fifty dollars he have ever seen. And Cooney, Jon, Ben, Scott, Sean, and myself made our way to the airport. I hadn’t slept, and in Oakland Wendy was waiting at the airport to take us home. She wanted to know if Ben would let her sleep with another man for a million dollars. Ben said, "Why, you got an offer?"

© Stephen Elliott 2002

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