Lying on the Couch (23 page)

And to fold his hand now—and to learn that his trip aces would have won—Christ, he'd never forgive himself that failure of nerve. He'd never recover. Goddammit! Goddammit! He had no fucking choice. He was too deep into this pot to go back. Shelly coughed up the eight hundred.

The denouement was quick and merciful. Len turned over a king-high flush, and Shelly's trip aces were dead in the water. And even Len's flush didn't win: Arnie had a full house, completely hidden— that meant he drew it on the last card. Shit! Shelly saw that even if he had drawn his diamond flush, he would have lost. And even if he had gotten his three or four, he still would have lost for low—Bill turned a perfect "nuts" low: five, four, three two, ace. For an instant Shelly felt like crying, but instead he flashed his great smile and said, "Tell me that wasn't two thousand dollars' worth of fun!"

Everyone counted his chips and cashed in with Len. The game rotated from home to home, every two weeks. The host acted as banker and settled all accounts at the end of the evening. Shelly was down fourteen thou, three hundred. He wrote a check and apologetically explained that he was postdating it a few days. Taking out an enormous wad of hundred-dollar bills, Len said, "Forget it. Shelly, I'll cover it. Bring the check to the next game." That was the way this game was. The trust ran so deep that the guys often said that in case of a flood or an earthquake, they could play poker by telephone.

"Naw, no problem," Shelly replied nonchalantly. "I brought the wrong checks and just have to transfer funds into this account."

But Shelly did have a problem. A very big problem. Four thousand dollars in his bank account and he owed fourteen thousand dollars. And if Norma found out about his losses, his marriage would be over. This just might be his last poker game. On his way out he took a nostalgic stroll around Len's home. Maybe his last walk around Len's home, or any of the guys' homes. Tears came to his eyes as he looked at the antique carousel horses on the stairwell landings, and the gloss of the enormous polished koa wood dining room table, the six-foot-square slab of sandstone teeming with impressions of prehistoric fish frozen for all time.

Seven hours ago, the evening had started at that table with a feast of hot corned beef, tongue, and pastrami sandwiches, which Len sliced and piled high and surrounded with half green pickles and slaw and sour cream potato salad—all specially flown in earlier that day from the Carnegie Deli in New York. Len ate hugely and entertained hugely. And then he exercised it off, most of it, on the Stair-master and treadmill in his well-equipped gym.

Shelly walked into the salon and joined the rest of the guys as they stood admiring an old painting Len had just bought at auction in London. Not recognizing the artist, and afraid of showing his ignorance. Shelly remained silent. Art was only one of the topics from which Shelly felt excluded; there were others: wine (several of his poker mates had restaurant-sized cellars and often traveled together to wine auctions), opera, ballet, cruise ships, three-star Parisian restaurants, casino betting limits. All too rich for Shelly's blood.

He took a good look at each of the players, as though to impress each indelibly into his memory. He knew these were the good old days, and sometime in the future—maybe after a stroke, while sitting on the lawn of a nursing home some autumn day, dried leaves tumbling in the wind, faded plaid blanket in his lap—he wanted to be able to conjure up each smiling face.

There was Jim, the Iron Duke or Rock of Gibraltar, as he was often called. Jim had gigantic hands and a mighty jaw. God, he was tough. No one had bluffed Jim out of a hand, ever.

And Vince: enormous. Or sometimes enormous. Sometimes he was not. Vince had a yo-yo relationship with the Pritikin health and weight-loss centers: always either going to one (a couple of times his wake-up call had been settling into a chair at one of the games only to break it) or coming from one, slim and sleek—and bringing diet

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peach sodas, fresh apples, and fat-free fudge cookies. Most of the time he put out lavish buffets when the game was at his house—his wife made great Italian food—but for the first couple of months after leaving a Pritikin center, the guys dreaded the food he served: baked tortilla chips, raw carrots and mushrooms, Chinese chicken salad without the sesame oil. Most of the guys ate before they came. They liked heavy food—the richer the better.

Next Shelly thought about Dave, a balding, bearded shrink, who had bad vision and would go ballistic when the host didn't provide jumbo index poker cards. He'd run out of the house and roar away in his bright red, dented Honda Civic to the nearest variety store— not an easy feat since some of the homes were in deep, deep suburbia. Dave's insistence on the proper cards was a source of great merriment. He was such a bad player, spewing "tells" all over the table, that most of the guys thought he was better off when he didn't see his cards. And the most comical thing was that Dave actually thought he was a good poker player! Funny thing was, Dave usually ended up ahead. That was the great mystery of the Tuesday game: Why in hell didn't Dave lose his ass in this game?

It was an endless source of amusement that a shrink should be much more out of touch with himself than anyone else at the table was. Or at least had been more out of touch. Dave was coming around. No more haughty intellectual holier-than-thou shit. No more ten-syllable words. What were they? "Penultimate hand" or "duplicitous strategy." Or instead of a "stroke" he'd say "cerebrovascular accident. "And the food he used to serve—sushi, melon kabobs, cold fruit soup, pickled zucchini. Worse than Vince's. Nobody touched a bite, but still it took Dave a year to get the point—and then only after he started getting anonymous faxes of brisket, brownie, and cheesecake recipes.

He's so much better now. Shelly thought, acts like a real person. We should have billed him for our services. Several guys took him in hand. Arnie sold him a five percent interest in one of his race horses, took him to workouts and races, taught him how to read the racing form and how to dope out horses from watching their workouts. Harry introduced Dave to pro basketball. When they first met, Dave didn't know a point guard from a free safety or a shortstop. Where had he spent his first forty years? Now Dave drives a burgundy Alfa, shares season basketball tickets with Ted and hockey tickets with Len, lays down his bets with the rest of the guys with Arnie's Vegas

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bookie, and almost forked out a thousand bucks to go to Streisand's Vegas concert with Vince and Harry.

Shelly watched Arnie walk out the door wearing his idiotic Sherlock Holmes hat. He always wore a hat during the game and, if he won, continued wearing the same hat until its luck wore out. Then he went out and bought a new one. That goddamn Sherlock Holmes hat had made him about forty thou. Arnie drove his custom-made Porsche two and a half hours to the game. A couple of years ago he moved to L.A. for a year to manage his cellular phone company and flew up regularly to see his dentist and play in the game. Just as a gesture, the guys took out his airfare from the first couple of pots. Sometimes his dentist. Jack, played, too—until he lost too much. Jack was a terrible player but a terrific dresser. One time Len took a great fancy to Jack's Western metallic-stitched shirt and made a side bet on a hand: two hundred dollars against the shirt. Jack lost: a "queens over" boat to Len's straight flush. Len let him wear the shirt home but came to collect it the next morning. That was Jack's last game. And every game for about the next year Len came dressed in Jack's shirt.

Even during his best times. Shelly had by far the least money of the group. By a factor of ten. Or more. And now, with the Silicon Valley slump, was not one of the best times; he had been out of work since Digilog Microsystems had gone belly up five months ago. At first he hounded the headhunters and scoured the classified ads every day. Norma billed two hundred fifty an hour for her legal services. That was great for family finances but made Shelly ashamed to accept a job paying twenty or twenty-five an hour. He set his demands so high that the headhunters ultimately dropped him, and he gradually became acclimated to the idea of being supported by his wife.

No, Shelly was not gifted at making money. And it ran in the family. His father had worked and scratched for years to save two stakes when Shelly was young. And blew them both. He sank the first in a Japanese restaurant in Washington, D.C., which opened two weeks before Pearl Harbor. The second, ten years later, he used to buy an Edsel dealership.

Shelly kept up the family tradition. He was an all-American college tennis player but won only three matches in three years on the pro satellite tour. He was handsome, he'd play brilliantly, the crowds loved him, he'd always get the first service break—but he

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just couldn't put his opponent away. Maybe he was just too nice a guy. Maybe he needed a "closer." When he retired from the pro circuit, he invested his modest inheritance in a tennis club near Santa Cruz a month before the '89 earthquake swallowed up his whole valley. He received a small insurance settlement, most of which he invested in Pan Am Airlines stock just before it went belly up; some went into junk bonds with Michael Milken's brokerage firm, the rest he invested in the San Jose Nets of the American Volleyball League.

Perhaps that was one of the game's attractions for Shelly. These guys knew what the hell they were doing. They knew how to make money. Maybe some of it would rub off on him.

Of all the guys, Willy was by far the richest. When he sold his start-up personal finance software company to Microsoft, he walked off with about forty million. Shelly knew that from reading the newspapers; none of the guys ever talked openly about it. What he loved about Willy was the way he enjoyed his money. He made no bones about it: his mission on earth was to have a good time. No guilt. No shame. Willy spoke and read Greek—his folks were Greek immigrants. He especially loved the Greek writer Kazanzakis and tried to pattern himself after Zorba, one of his characters, whose purpose in life was to leave death "nothing but a burned-out castle."

Willy loved action. Whenever he folded a hand, he'd rush into the other room to snatch a peek on the TV at some game—basketball, football, baseball—on which he had bet a bundle. Once he rented a Santa Cruz war games ranch for the whole day, the kind of place where groups play Capture the Flag using guns that shoot paint bullets. Shelly smiled as he remembered driving out to the place and seeing the guys standing around watching a duel. Willy, wearing goggles and a World War I fighter pilot's hat, and Vince, both with guns in hand, were pacing off ten steps. Len, the referee, wore Jack's shirt and held a fistful of hundred-dollar bills from the betting. Those guys were nuts—they'd bet on anything.

Shelly followed Willy outside where Porsches, Bentleys, and Jags were revving up and waiting for Len to open up the massive iron gates. Willy turned and put his arm around Shelly's shoulders; the guys did a lot of touching. "How's it going. Shelly? Job search moving?"

"Comme ci, comme ga."

"Hang in there," said Willy. "Business is turning. I've got a feeling the Valley's going to open up again soon. Let's have lunch." The

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two had become close friends over the years. Willy loved to play tennis and Shelly often gave him a few pointers and had, for years, informally coached Willie's kids, one of whom now played on Stanford's team.

"Great! Next week?"

"No, after that. Away a lot the next two weeks but real free the end of the month. My schedule's in the office. I'll call you tomorrow. I want to talk about something with you. I'll see you at the next game."

No comment from Shelly.

"Right?"

Shelly nodded. "Right, Willy."

"So long. Shelly, so long. Shelly." "So long, Shelly." "So long. Shelly." The calls rang out as the big sedans pulled away. Shelly ached as he watched them drive off into the night. Oh, how he would miss them. God, he loved those guys!

Shelly drove home in deep grief. Losing fourteen thou. Dammit — takes talent to lose fourteen grand. But it wasn't the money. Shelly didn't care about the fourteen thou. What he cared about was the guys and the game. But there was no way he could continue playing. Absolutely no way! The arithmetic was simple: there was no more money. / have to get a job. If not in software sales, then I'm going to have to go into another field — maybe back to selling yachts in Monterey. Yuck. Can I do thatf Sitting around for weeks waiting for my one sale every month or two would be enough to send me back to the horses. Shelly needed action.

In the past six months he had lost a lot of money in the game. Maybe forty, fifty thousand dollars—he had been afraid to keep an exact count. And there was no way to get more money. Norma deposited her paycheck in a separate bank account. He had borrowed on everything. And from everyone. Except, of course, from one of the guys. That would be bad form. Only one last possession he could get his hands on—a thousand shares of Imperial Valley Bank stock, worth about fifteen thousand bucks. His problem was how to cash them in without Norma finding out. Somehow or other she'd get wise. He had run out of excuses. And she was running out of patience. It was only a matter of time.

Fourteen thou? That fucking last hand. He kept reliving it. He was sure he had played it right: when you got the odds, you have to push . . , lose your nerve and it's over. It was the cards. He knew

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they would turn soon. That's the way it went. He had the long view. He knew what he was doing. He had gambled heavily since he was a teenager and ran a baseball bookie operation throughout high school. And a damn profitable operation, too.

When he was fourteen he read, he forgot where, that the odds on picking any three ball players to get a combined total of six hits on any given day was about twenty to one. So he offered nine or ten to one and had plenty of takers. Day after day the suckers kept believing that three players selected from the likes of Mantle, Musial, Berra, Pesky, Bench, Carew, Banks, McQuinn, Rose, and Kaline had to get six hits between them. Suckers! They never learned.