A Gambling Man

Chapter 4

“Hey. Hey, you!”

Archer looked over and saw the woman waving enthusiastically at him.

It was Liberty Callahan, of the Dancing Birds troupe, sitting at the roulette table. She had changed out of her stage outfit and lost her condor-sized feather. While her sparkly dress was tight, her welcoming smile, promising skittish fun with few rules, was even more appealing to Archer. And yet when he more soberly took in her toothy smile and frisky appearance, Archer saw in it prison guards itching to bust his head, chain gangs to nowhere, and food that was not food at all. That was what had happened to him the last time a gal had called out to him like that. A sob story, a poorly planned escape from her tyrannical father, the arrival of the police, a change in heart by the gal after her old man put the screws to her, with the result that Archer had donated a few years of his life to busting up rocks and seeing the world through the narrow width of prison cell bars. Still, he ordered a highball from the bar and took a seat next to her. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. He was an internal optimist. Or just stupid.

“I’m Liberty Callahan.”

“I’m Archer.”

She shot him a curious look. “That’s a funny name.”

“It’s my surname.”

“What’s your given name?”

“Not one I ‘give’ out.”

Her features went slack and put out, but Archer didn’t feel unduly bothered by this. Any first meeting was a nifty place to lay out the ground rules. And his new universal ground rules were to take no one into his confidence and to listen more and talk less.

“Suit yourself, Archer.” She turned to play with her little stack of chips.

He said, “Mr. Shyner pointed you out to me back at the café. Told me your name too.”

She eyed him cautiously. “That’s right, you were at his table.”

Archer eyed the wheel and the dealer standing in the notch cut out of the elongated table, while the gamblers sipped on drinks and conspired on their future bets. He heard all sorts of talk coming in one ear about this method and that superstition coupled with that infallible telltale sign of where a spinning ball would come to rest in a bowl full of colored numbers in slots that were spinning the other way. People had colorful chips in hand that looked very different from the ones Archer had been using at the craps table.

The table had a sign that said minimum and maximum bets differentiated between inside and outside bets. Archer had no idea what any of that meant.

“He told me you want to get into acting?” said Archer.

Her smile emerged once more, showing every tooth in her arsenal, including a jacketed porcelain crown in the back that was so white it looked nearly pewter in the shadowy cave of her mouth.

She nodded, her smile deepening. “People calling out your name and wanting your autograph. Your picture in the newspapers. Somebody else driving you around and you travel with your own maid. It all sure sounds swell. So, yeah, I want to try my hand at it. Stupid, maybe. Long shot, sure, but why not me, right?”

“So what are you going to do about it?” asked Archer evenly.

“Hey, hey!” called out the dealer. He was beady-eyed and thick at the waist but with a steady hand in which the little ball already rested. “You got a seat, you got to bet.”

“Sorry,” said Callahan. She quickly put a chip on ten black.

Archer pulled out some of his crap chips.

The dealer shook his head. “No, no, you need to use roulette chips here, sonny. Let me see what you got there.”

Archer pulled out all of his chips and showed them to the dealer. The man eyed him with interest as he totaled them up, scooped them away, and placed a stack of colorful chips in front of Archer.

“Okay, what do you want each to be worth?”

“Excuse me?” said Archer.

The dealer told him what his crap chips had been worth. “But you get to pick how much each of these chips are worth, while not going over the total value of the chips you just turned in.”

“Why so complicated?”

“It’s not complicated. It’s roulette. Everybody at the table has a different color chip. They tell me what they’re worth and I keep that in my head. What’s complicated?”

Archer glanced over the chips and gave the man a number.

“Thanks, genius,” the dealer said as he placed a like-colored chip atop the rail by the wheel and then placed a number marker on it that coincided with the chip value Archer had given him.

The dealer grinned at Archer. “Memories are iffy, marker chips make it easy.”

“Yeah, I can see that, genius.” He put a chip on ten black next to Callahan’s.

The ball was dropped and the wheel spun by the dealer. People kept betting until the ball was about to drop and then the dealer called out, “No more bets.” Seconds later Archer and Callahan lost their chips because the ball decided twenty-one red all the way on the other side was a much more comfortable resting place than ten black.

Callahan took a sip of her cocktail and said, “I’m going to Hollywood. That’s what you do if you want to be in the movie business, Archer. Ain’t you heard of that place?”

“I don’t go to many movies. Never saw the point. They’re not real.”

“Well, that is the point.”

“If you say so.”

“Life is crap, Archer. You go to the movies to get away from that for a little bit. Get some pixie dust thrown on you for a precious two hours.”

“And when the two hours are up and the pixie dust falls off, your life is still crap.”

“Boy, it must be fun walking in your shoes,” she observed.

“But then you go back to the movies for more pixie dust, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

Archer said, “So you’re an addict. Might as well be smoking reefer. Movies are about making money. And putting butts in seats. No butts in the seat, no autographs, no maids, and no newspaper pics.”

She frowned. “Thanks for popping the one dream I have.”

Archer sipped his highball and tapped a finger against the tabletop. “We all have dreams. Point is, what are you going to do about it? Just going to the place doesn’t seem like enough. I’ll bet it’s chock-full of people wanting to do the same thing as you.”

“I know that. I need to take some classes and work on how I walk and how I talk.”

“You can already walk and talk. And dance, too, and sing. I’m witness to that. You do it pretty swell, in fact.”

Surprisingly, her frown deepened at this compliment. “But there’s a lot more to acting than that. You have to have what they call the ‘it’ factor. The camera has to love you. It has to capture something in you that maybe even you don’t see. That’s how a star is made.”

“Heard that a bunch of actors fought in the war. Hank Fonda, Clark Gable. Lots.”

“Oh, poor Clark Gable. Wasn’t it awful what happened to his wife, Carole Lombard?” said Callahan. “That plane crash after she was out promoting war bonds. Her mom was with her but didn’t like to fly. She wanted to take the train back. Lombard wanted to take a plane to get back to Gable faster. They said she and her mom flipped a coin. Her mom lost and they took the plane. And it flew right into a mountain.”

“Yeah, I heard about that while I was overseas. Damn shame.”

“So you fought?”

Archer shrugged. “Sure, like most everybody else.”

“I worked in a factory making bombs.”

“Dangerous work.”

Callahan took a moment to pull a Camel from a pack she slid from her purse. She held out the smoke for Archer to light, which he did, using a box of matches he took from a stack next to a green glass ashtray overflowing with smoked butts. The air was thick with so much smoke Archer thought a fog had materialized inside.

She cupped his hand with hers as he lit the Camel. She glanced up at him as their skin touched, but he wasn’t looking at her, with good reason. He waved the match dead and plunked it with the other wreckage into the ashtray. Then he sat back and watched her smoke. She did it well.

She said, “One girl I knew at the factory got killed in an accident. And I lost a brother and a cousin in the war. One in Germany and one in France. They’re buried over there. I want to make enough money to go see their graves and put flowers on them,” she added, her expression growing even more somber, but her eyes lifted to his. “You lose anyone in the war?”

“Just almost myself.”

“Right,” she said, apparently disappointed by this.

“So Hollywood then?” prompted Archer. “Your dream?”

“Yes. And don’t give me a hard time about it,” she added in a pouty voice that Archer didn’t much care for. Women, he’d found, did that to move men one way or another.

The dealer suddenly barked, “Hey, lovebirds, you gonna bet or you gonna give up your seats, ’cause that’s the choice you got to make. And do it before I die of old age, will ya?”

Callahan looked at the man with an expression that gave Archer pause. It was akin to a snake sizing up its next meal. He didn’t like it, but he could understand it. With a slow, methodical, full-of-meaning motion, she pushed her remaining chips onto twenty-two black.

“You sure about that, honey? Just that one bet,” said the dealer, giving her an eye back as though to evaluate her mental acuity.

Turning to Archer she said, “It’s the year I was born, 1922. And I like black better than red, always have.”

Archer slid all of his roulette chips next to hers.

She jerked so violently her Camel came close to hitting her in the eye.

“Archer, that’s too many chips for a single ride on the wheel. Soften the blow with other bets on white, black, even, odd. Don’t be a dummy, spread the risk.”

“Lady’s talking smart,” said the dealer.

Archer finished his highball and sensed the others at the table watching him, wondering whether he was mad, rich, just stupid, or all three. “Thing is, I didn’t earn it. I just followed a guy over at the craps table and got out before I lost it all. For me, it’s free money.”

“Ain’t no such thing, buddy,” barked the dealer.

Archer eyed him. “You in the business of not taking bets, buddy?”

The man chuckled and spittle ran down his chin. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Your funeral, pal. So just to be clear, you’re doing a straight up bet on twenty-two black with no outside odd or even, red or black column bets? How about some inside splits, corners, street, double street? Last chance, amigo.”

“If I knew what any of that meant, I’d answer you,” said Archer. “But all I know is if that little ball drops on twenty-two black, we win.”

“You know the odds?” asked the dealer nervously.

Archer glanced around the bowl. “You got thirty-six numbers.” Then he noted the zero and double zero slots that were in green felt rather than red or black.

“What are those numbers?” he asked.

The dealer grinned. “That’s where the House gets its advantage, pal, didn’t you know?”

“You mean, it doesn’t count for the odds?”

The grin deepened. “Nope, just two more numbers to add to the thrill. See, that’s what advantage means.”

“So thirty-six minus one means the odds are longer than the road from heaven to hell and the payoff is thirty-five to one, although the wheel has thirty-seven opportunities to lose.”

“You’re picking it up real fast, pardner,” said the dealer, eyeing the big stack of chips on twenty-two black. His eyebrow twitched and a sweat bubble sprouted over this twitch like a mushroom after a hard rain. “Like taking candy from a baby,” he said, but there was no spirit behind it.

“So you gonna spin the wheel and drop the ball, or do I have time for a smoke break?” asked Archer.

Callahan gripped Archer’s hand under the table and gave him a pointed smile that showed all teeth and the jacketed crown that now looked more white than pewter.

The dealer looked around the table and then glanced to the ceiling and muttered something Archer couldn’t hear.

The wheel was spun, the dealer sent the ivory ball spinning in the opposite direction, and Archer and Callahan waited for what seemed an eternity for the game to do what it was designed to do.

The bona fide absurdity of the endeavor was not lost on Archer. He watched a dozen reasonable-looking adults eyeing a little ball like it was the most important thing they would ever witness in their entire lives.

It’s a damn miracle we won the war and aren’t speaking German.

“No more bets,” barked the dealer.

A moment later, Callahan shrieked, “Omigod,” as the ball dropped into the slot for twenty-two black.

She threw her arms around Archer and kissed him on the lips, almost knocking him out of his seat.

“Damn,” said the dealer, shaking his head.

“How much did we win?” asked Archer quietly. “I mean in money, not wafers.”

The dealer eyed the bets and then the markers and said mournfully, “Little over four grand for you. Two hundred and eighty bucks for the lady.”

“Holy Jesus,” exclaimed Callahan.

“We’ll cash out now,” said Archer, giving the dealer a dead stare.

The man slowly counted out a number of regular casino chips. He slid a small pile to Callahan and a far larger stack to Archer.

Archer took his stacks of chips, split them evenly, and handed one stack to Callahan.

“What are you doing?” she said, bug-eyed. “You won those, not me.”

“I just followed your bet, Liberty. I would’ve won nothing except for you. So a fifty-fifty split seems fair.” He lit a Lucky Strike and eyed the dealer through the mist. “After all, it was free money.”

“Do you...? I mean, are you...? Oh, Archer.” She kissed him again, this time on the cheek and not with as much fury, so he held firm in his seat.

The dealer said, “Hey, look, the night’s young. You folks sure you won’t let me try to win some of that back? My boss ain’t gonna be happy with me.”

Archer flipped him a fifty-dollar chip. “He might still be unhappy. But you won’t be, amigo.”

The man caught the chip and looked surprised. “Didn’t figure you for a class act. My mistake, buddy.”

“I think you figured me just right, but four grand can bring class to any bum.”

After Archer and Callahan reclaimed their hats from the hat check girl, they turned chips into dollars at the cashier’s desk, and Archer carefully folded the money over and put it through a slit in his hat’s lining. Callahan’s stash disappeared into her purse.

“How about a drink?” she said. “To celebrate? On me? Not here. They water everything down. I know a place.”

He studied her for so long she finally said, “What!”

“Works for me.”

“What took you so long?”

“The guy usually does the asking, not the girl.”

“Well, I’m the other way around, Archer. You hang around me long enough, you’ll figure that out.”

“Maybe I will. Or maybe I won’t. But let’s go get that drink,” he added with a measure of calm bordering on ambivalence.

“You’re a strange bird. Most folks after winning all that would be sort of giddy.”

“I don’t think I have any giddy left.”