The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 63

Memories, sleepless in the dark.

Sometimes business is slow, a job is hard, and I need an easy fix for money.

Often, I choose casinos.

Card counting isn’t so tough, once you know the rules. There are no laws against it; in Vegas they’ll ask you to move on, in Macau they’ll break your fingers, in Abuja or Mong La they’ll break a lot more than that. Maths makes it easy for the house to spot, a statistical flare on their systems. Under such circumstances, the best course of action is to win quick and leave, walk round the block, and return to a different table, ready to bet on the next winning hand.

Playing blackjack in a casino in New Orleans, the man said, “Are you card counting?” smiling as he spoke, his voice low, his eyes fixed on mine, the dealer swapping shoes, attention elsewhere.

I ran my fingers along the growing stacks of counters and said, “Why do you ask?”

“You’re winning at a higher statistical rate than is normal for the game.”

“You work for the casino?”

He shook his head. “Teach high-school math. Here for a wedding. I lost five hundred dollars in twenty minutes and promised myself that was enough. Then I saw you, and I thought… are you counting?”

“No law against it.”

“No law; no. I hope you don’t think me too forward…?”

His body, already half turned away. I caught his arm, pulled him back to my side. If he went, he would forget. “No,” I said. “No. Stay. Watch.”

Later, in the lift, his hand brushed my arm, and for a moment he looked as if he might kiss me, before his eyes darted away. I took his hand, and when we were in my room he said, “Jesus, how’d you get yourself such a fancy place to sleep?”

“Put big money behind the counter in the casino. This place likes to keep its fishes hooked.”

“But you’re winning,” he replied. “Surely they can see that you’re winning?”

“The computers can see,” I said. “But computers can’t act, and everyone else forgets.”

When he went to the bathroom, I stayed outside the door, singing. “When I dance they call me Macarena! They all want me, they can’t have me, so they all come and dance beside me!”

The sound of my voice kept the recollection of me fresh in his mind, and when he emerged he was laughing, and said, “You’re like no one I’ve ever met before.”

He was nervous when I pulled him onto the bed, and gentle. After, when he looked like he might fall asleep, I talked, and he stayed awake, blinking bewildered at nothing much, so I kept talking, and found that I couldn’t stop, that the words wouldn’t stop, until finally at 4:30 a.m. I was still speaking and he was fast asleep.

I got a blanket, and placed it over him.

I pulled on my running shoes and top, and went out into the streets, past the shuttered restaurants and through the drifting litter, beneath the sodium streetlights and round the broad boulevards where the young trees were beginning to grow again, and when I returned, he’d left the room, perhaps having woken and remembered nothing, and I showered and lay awake on my bed that smelt of him, and didn’t sleep until dawn.

The next night I watched him on the blackjack table, trying to count cards. Some basic understanding of the things I had said to him perhaps lingered, even if I was gone. I find extraordinary hope in this thought — no, more than that: I find salvation, divinity in it.

When he lost, I sat beside him and said, “Hi. I’ve been watching you play. You’ll want to try something a little different.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I used to teach math in high school.”

“Hey — that’s what I do.”

“I’m here for a wedding.”

“Me too!”

I smiled and said, “What a coincidence.”

That night, we went to his bedroom, and as he lay in my arms he said, “Jesus, I don’t usually do this, I’m not that kinda guy,” and was asleep within minutes. I snuck out a few hours later, so that he wouldn’t be afraid when he woke to find a stranger in his bed.