Pocket Kings (48 page)

Writing was forbidden.
Th
at is what killed me.
Th
ey took away my sole salvation.

I was dying to write again, to feel that wonderful sensation of words flowing like honey from my soul, and since I couldn't, I made it my avocation to sit next to fellow patients reading whiny recovery books and harass them.

“What are you,” one surly guy snapped at me in the lounge, “some kind of writer or something?” “As a matter of fact,” I told him, “at one time I was.” He said, “You know, I could write a book about this place.”

I got up and left.

I didn't make any friends there.

On my sixth day at Shining Path I phoned Cynthia at work and told her, “I feel a lot better. It's working. It kills me to admit it but it's really working.”

“Really? Already? It is?”

“Yes . . . I'm finally kicking this thing. God, what an idiot I was! To have risked losing you and to screw up my life like I did. Baby, it's as if I'm a new person. I'm getting better.”

I told her I missed her and we both got choked up. She sounded happy for me. I told her that it was against Shining Path's rules for us to talk again during the remainder of my treatment.

We said good-bye and first thing the next morning I packed up and left the place.

Nobody tried to stop me. It wasn't a prison, there were no fences or guards with guns in towers. I reclaimed my laptop and wheeled my suitcase to the parking lot and waited for a taxi. It was sunny and warm and I was wearing winter clothes.
Th
e driver took me to the airport. I went to the ticket counter and was just about to buy a one-way ticket to New York but saw that there was a flight to Las Vegas leaving in an hour and a half.

I'm staying in Las Vegas now in a motel a mile from downtown.
Th
e Golden Palomino Motor Lodge.
Th
irty-two rooms, cable TV, AC, mountain views. Sixty-nine dollars a night. Built in 1954, the motel's layout is U-shaped and the view of the mountains to the west is spellbinding. If Man had not invented Las Vegas, you think as you stare out at the sunset, then God or firebreathing demons living in the Earth's molten core would have. Coronas of magenta, cedillas of lilac and violet waving over the mountains, and finally a fluttering of foreboding crimson and . . . blah blah blah. Nowhere else have I seen such fire take over a sky.
Th
e view of the swimming pool, which is the size of a train-station bathroom and is just as disgusting, is not spellbinding: the pool is kidney-shaped, if you had a severely damaged kidney, and the water is teal but it's a chemical teal, not a real deal teal.

I've been here almost a week and a half. Writing. Occasionally playing. But mostly writing.

During the week the place is fairly deserted. I occasionally hear couples fighting in foreign languages, I hear liquor bottles being thrown into trashcans, I hear men laughing, coughing, and cursing to themselves.
Th
e guy in a room down the hall lives here year-round; he's in his seventies and was a blackjack dealer at the old Desert Inn and now only has one arm. He won't tell me why but I have a feeling the story isn't pretty.
Th
e narrow Maypo-colored hallways reek of cigarettes, and the sheets have a brownish tinge to them but they seem to be clean.

A tall neon sign stands at the motel's entranceway. A muscular palomino, full-length, flicks on and off.
Th
e horse is considerably more orange than gold, and the sign, I've been told, has been on the fritz for decades. For a few seconds the neon horse is on all fours but then is supposed to rear up, then settle back down again. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't, and yesterday I bet someone a hundred dollars that on the twentieth flicker it would work. We waited and counted and he handed me the money. But it wasn't an honest bet . . . I'd been studying the sign for days and knew its patterns.

Cynthia is convinced I'm still at Shining Path working out my problems, talking to fellow addicts and recovering.
Th
at's exactly what I want her to think.

My plan is to stay here for another two weeks.
Th
en I'm going to fly back to New York, tell her I completed the program and that I'm a changed man and completely cured.

If I can pull that off, if she takes me back, it would be my greatest bluff ever.

I write, rewrite and, as you can plainly see, don't do nearly as much deleting as I should. It's what keeps me going and I'm terrified of stopping. At night I take a taxi downtown and play roulette for a bit. It is the stupidest game ever concocted but, hey, if it was good enough for Dostoyevsky it's good enough for the Big Man, too. I win, I lose, I break even, I come home.

Th
ree days ago I took a break from writing and began playing poker again. I worked the stack back to $1,000 and then up to $3,000 with a King-high straight. I was talking to people, to new players on the site, and making jokes and making new friends. I never let on that at one time I had been one of the kings of this very strange hill. Yesterday I got my stack up to over $4,500. It took a while, it was tough, grueling going at times, but I hung in there and battled. Cocky, bold and foolish, I then moved up to the High tables.
Th
ere, glowering behind his Aviator shades, sat the hooded, unknowable menace SaniFlush, all alone and waiting for me.

It was just me and him, and my heart began to pound.

High Noon with the Prince of Poker Darkness.

“Chip,” he asked me, “where's the rest of your money?”

“You're looking at it, Killer,” I told him.

He nodded, smiled wryly, and shrugged. I could
see
it.

Our hands were dealt and we stopped talking. It didn't look too good for me.
Th
ere were three hearts on the table, and the way he was betting, I was certain he had a flush. I needed either a 10 or a 7 on the river for a full boat . . . it was the only thing that could save me.

By the river, every penny of mine was at stake. I sat on the edge of the bed with my knees knocking, my heartbeat quickening, and my stomach turning to warm slop.

Th
e river card came up a 7 and I won over $6,000. It was a minor yes-there-really-is-a-God miracle and I almost thanked the Almighty for it.

Ten grand in three days.
Th
at's not bad.
Th
at's not bad at all.

No second acts, you say? Okay, think what you will.

I can stop now. After all, I'm a winner again.

IRIS JOHNSON

Ted Heller is the author of two previous novels,
Slab Rat
and
Funnymen.
He lives in New York.

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Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

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Workman Publishing

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New York, New York 10014

© 2012 by Ted Heller.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN 978-1-61620-147-0