Pocket Kings (43 page)

“
Th
is is difficult for me to say,” she said, “considering how much you mean to me, but out means out.”

I fell to the floor, grabbed onto her calves, and she said, “It's not going to work.”

I stood up and asked her, “Okay, then what will?”

She told me I looked terrible and she cooked me some bland pasta, but she wouldn't sit at the table while I ate it. We stayed silent until the last noodle was down.

“So you have to leave now,” she said.

I told her I had nowhere to go, then said: “Give me ten minutes.”

I checked into another hotel, then flew to Detroit the following night. (I tried to tell Wolverine Mommy I was coming to Michigan but couldn't find her online.) It was obvious from the roiling sky lowering in on me that it was going to snow. After gorging on five Cinnabons at the airport, I rented a Hyundai Cilantro and drove north.
Th
e snow was falling but I made it to the Mackinac Bridge. I kept driving.
WELCOME TO PURGATORY
, the crooked sign said. I checked into the Purgatory Inn, and Wolve came to visit and that's when I began writing this.
Th
is cathartic, redemptive, lifesaving memoir.

Rarely leaving my motel room—where was there to go?—I wrote for several weeks in Purgatory. It was hard to tell when it was day or night. I also played poker. And won as usual. But winning wasn't fun anymore. Even the sadistic thrill of crushing inferiors was gone.

“So are you going to tell me,” Wolve asked me one night, “what happened with you and Artsy?”

“Nothing did,” I told her. “It's time to move on.”

Artsy Painter Gal no longer existed as such. But Victoria G. Landreth was out there somewhere, playing under a new alias. I just knew it. I would spend hours watching players play and chat and see if I could discern who she was. Sometimes I was sure I'd found her but then I could tell—from a joke, phrase, a word, a raise, or a bluff—it wasn't her. I would play at tables and sometimes when a new player like Ruthless in Seattle, Ickie Vickie, or Little Red Whorevette joined me, I thought it might be her. Maybe it was. But she didn't mean anything to me anymore. She was like a case of the mumps I'd had when I was two. It was just something that happened. Or didn't happen.
Th
e only thing I wanted was my old life back.

Cynthia wasn't taking my calls or answering my e-mails or text messages. Had I sent smoke signals, she would have ignored those, too.

But I was writing again.
Th
at was a start. And it felt great.
Th
ere was hope. And this time the hope didn't involve landing a 6 on the river to complete a gutshot straight.

“Cynthia,” I said in one desperate phone message to her, “I'm writing again! I swear I am. And guess what? It's a memoir. About this whole mess!
Th
at's a good thing, isn't it?”

For all I know she fast-forwarded through that message and never heard it.

But one afternoon, perhaps five weeks into my Purgatory sojourn, my motel phone rang. It was Wifey. (Caller ID had tipped her off as to my phone number.) I was so excited to hear her voice I almost began to weep. But there was little joy in her voice.

“So where are you exactly?” she asked.

I told her where but left out the Wolverine Mommy part. I repeated that I was writing again but either she didn't believe me or didn't care. A few months ago when I told her that I was writing or had just won $500 playing poker, her face would have lit up. But now? Everything about her was not illuminated. And it was all my fault.

“Look, the reason I'm calling is,” she said, “Second Gunman just called—”

“
Huh? Johnny? From England?”

“Yes. Him. He called from Blackpool. He said you might be in trouble. Some Swedish man is in New York now, he said, and—”

“
What?!
A Swedish man?”

It was so pleasant hearing her voice that I was having trouble keeping track.

“And he wants to kill you.
Th
at's what Second said.”

Sweden. Who in Sweden would want to kill me? Who in Sweden wanted to kill
anyone?
Other than Olof Palme, has anyone ever been killed in Sweden?!

“Apparently,” she continued, “you won a lot of money from him?”

Bjorn 2 Win. It had to be him, I knew. I'd beaten him for about fifteen grand all in all. He lost so easily to me that sometimes I actually felt sorry for him. It was like taking candy from a baby. For all I knew, he
was
a baby.

“Is it Bjorn? Did Second say it was Bjorn 2 Win?”

“Yes.
Th
at was his name.”

(No wonder Second was warning me, I thought—he was the one who advised me to play Bjorn whenever I hit a serious losing skid.
He feels responsible
.)

I didn't know what to say. Just the fact that my wife was talking about people named Second Gunman and Bjorn 2 Win was a sign of the walking-talking catastrophe I'd become.

“Well, at least I'm not home in case he finds me.”

“But I am! What if he comes after
me
?”

“You didn't beat him at poker. I did.”

(Yeah . . . but she
was
wearing the chinchilla coat that cost exactly sixteen grand, paid for with the money I had won off of Bjorn 2 Win and countless others.)

“Don't worry,” I told her. “If he really wants to kill me, I'll just give him his money back.”

I could give it to Bjorn, I figured, then probably win most of it back from him once he returned home. It was my money after all! Even though it was his.

Th
e wind howled and shook my flimsy door and I asked Cynthia, “Hey, do you want to come out here? I'll pay for the airfare and everything. It's really nice.”

Th
ere was only silence on the other end.

Just as I begged, “Please take me back!”—right between “take” and “me”—she hung up.

A few nights later Toll House Cookie found me online. He told me he had some news for me and my initial thought was,
Uh-oh, his wife suspects that his nonexistent Cousin Cleon really didn't die and I have to cover for him.
But that wasn't it. He asked me for my phone number and that's when I knew it was serious. He logged off and called me and told me he'd heard on the Galaxy that Bjorn was in New York buzzing around for me.

I didn't know whether to stay hidden in the Upper Peninsula or return to New York.

Marvis gave me a third option.
Th
ere was a motel near his toll plaza. It was thus only a few yards away from the Holland Tunnel and I would be close to my home, my former home.

“Okay . . . sounds doable,” I said to THC. I told him I'd be in New Jersey within two days.

When I hung up I pictured a lugubrious six-foot-eight Swede carrying a hatchet and lumbering around the streets of Manhattan at three in the morning. He was stopping strangers and asking them, “Do you know where is Frank Dixon?”

On my last night in Michigan, Wolve baked me a seven-layer chocolate cake, which she and I ate in less than ten minutes. We kissed on the cheek and said our good-byes and she returned to her three young boys and to nurture the next generation of doctors, civic leaders, fry cooks, and crystal-meth dealers.

Th
e next morning I drove back down to Detroit and flew to Newark. By then—about a month ago—I had won over a half a million dollars. $650,000 in less than a year! A Queen-high straight on the river netted me $14K against the fearsome SaniFlush and put me over $600K. “You're a damn good card player, Chip, you know that?” he told me.

I took a taxi from the airport to the Tunnel Motel. It was a dreary place, right on the highway, the kind of place that millions of people, on their way from New Jersey into New York City, have driven past and gasped, “Oh god, who would ever stay in a place like that?” (
Th
e answer is: Me . . . I would.)
Th
e last time I had seen this nondescript joint was the previous September, when Second and I came to New Jersey to pick up Marvis to go to Las Vegas. I had no idea that night, of course, that in a few months I'd be holing up there. It had barely registered then, and it was like John F. Kennedy looking across the street and thinking,
Hmm . . . that must be some sort of book depository over there
and then forgetting about it a second later.

I called Cynthia and told her where I was. She told me she hadn't heard from Second, and I assumed the coast was clear and that the Swede was back in Gothenburg chopping up stallions and mares. When I called her again the following morning, she didn't pick up the phone.

On my first night in New Jersey, the traffic outside kept me awake. It sounded like a dying person's wheeze, except the person never does completely die. Temporarily carless, I knew I could walk to the Holland Tunnel and into the city but I wasn't sure if that's permitted and I feared the way the
Times
might report it:

UNSUCCESSFUL AUTHOR PERISHES IN NJ–NY TUNNEL

Poker-Playing “Writer” Felled by Fatal Fumes, Coroner Suggests

Failed Novelist Was on Way Into Manhattan to Make Up With “Wifey”

Author Was So Hated and Ignored by
Th
is Paper
Th
at
Th
ere Really Is No Reason for
Th
is Article

Th
e worst thing was the smog. It sat all over the hotel roof, it seeped in through the walls, and in the middle of the night, half-awake and half-asleep, I thought I was becoming a part of it.

It was a dreadful atmosphere to work in but I kept writing. I kept playing, too, but the more I wrote, the less I played.
Th
e more I wrote, the less I needed to play. Once I got started I couldn't stop.
Th
is was my salvation. Writing was a better, healthier, and more enjoyable addiction than gambling, even though gambling was a hell of a lot more lucrative. Playing poker, the gratification isn't delayed. Writing, you sometimes have to wait years for the full punishment.

Th
en one cold afternoon there came a pounding on my motel door.

Hoping against hope it was Cynthia, I arose from my unheavenly bed and put on jeans and a sweatshirt over my thermal under­wear. (I'd begun sporting the Unabomber look since moving there.) Wifey knew where I was but even if she still felt one microbe-sized vestige of love for me why would she want to come feel it there?

It was Marvis/Cookie, I saw between the orange and black curtain. He had on his gloves and regulation blue Port Authority winter coat, and smoke was blowing out of his mouth as he bounced up and down in place, trying to keep warm. For a week he'd been bringing me pizzas and muffins and Whoppers, but he wasn't holding anything now.

I opened the door for him and the freeze outside nearly sucked me out of the room and blew me down the highway.

Marvis walked in and sat down on the motel room's one chair.

“Here,” he said, pulling a Snickers out of his coat. “You want this?”

When I said no, he told me it was frozen solid anyway and put it back in his pocket.

“You know, you could buy a car,” he said. “You got enough money.”

“Maybe I will. Why?”

“I'm just sayin', that's all.”

He looked at my laptop and told me that I played poker way too much and I told him truthfully that I'd been playing a lot less lately because I had started writing again. He waited a few seconds and said: “Did you know that Second Gunman is coming back to New York again?”

“No. I didn't.”

One day, I reflected, I wouldn't mind seeing Johnny-Boy again. But that wasn't the day. Nor would tomorrow be.

“And that the Swedish guy is still here? Bjorn whoever?”

“He's still around?!”

“Dude must really want his money back, Chip.”

I told THC that I'd won B2W's money fair and square, that it wasn't my fault I usually beat the Baltic Butcher, that a bet is a bet and that this wasn't just a game but was a business and it simply wasn't cricket for him to come and ask for his money back.

“I don't know if he's gonna actually
ask
for it,” he said.

“So why is Second coming? And when?”

“He just said he was getting a plane, that's all. Frankly, I'm not too anxious to see him.” He paused and said: “He did say he's comin' to save you and Wifey's asses though.”

“From . . . Bjorn?” Cookie nodded and I said, “Look, I told Wifey not to worry about him. He was coming after me, not her.”

“Have you spoken to her recently? Are you sure she's still alive?”