The Gamble
Fitzi went all in on four Queens/8 high.
Jimmy beat him with a straight flush of hearts.
He raked Fitzi’s chips into his pile.
“You buying back in?” Jimmy asked.
Jimmy had all the luck. It confounded Fitzi because Jimmy didn’t appear to be much of a man of God. He didn’t even wear a chain with a cross.
Fitzi opened his wallet and counted.
He needed some of Jimmy and the rest of the players’ goddamned chips to get through the next few days.
He counted a hundred and twenty-two bucks. Minus twenty-five for another buy-in, it would leave him with barely enough for dinner with his wife and a few more beers and generous tips at the bar and the nice pizza joint his wife liked.
Plus, he’d need another twenty-five bucks in a couple of days to get into Monday night’s card game. Even twenty-five was cutting it too close. He couldn’t show up at his own card game with just enough money to play a single round. It always took a few buy-ins to pay your way to winning with those cutthroats.
He put another twenty-five in the pot and gave himself a fresh stack of chips.
There wasn’t any room for error. If he didn’t come out a winner, he knew church would be off again, too.
Fitzi won the first few hands. He stacked more chips. He felt the momentum shifting. He felt the warmth of Saint Cajetan placing guile in the back seat. He went all in with another good hand – the afternoon’s final offering to his patron saint of luck and crafty cardsmanship.
He lost. He was out for good.
He left the smoky back room and walked around to bar, leaving the other players to continue with the game.
“How’d you do?” his wife asked.
She already knew. Her husband never left the game early unless he’d lost.
“Not great,” he said.
“We still going out?” she asked.
She knew the answer to that, too.
Fitzi thought about the price of the cheese curds his wife always ordered as an appetizer. He thought about twenty-five percent on a bill of fifty or sixty dollars.
“I’m tired. How about we stay here and get cheeseburgers?”
“I wanted Garzelli’s. And I’ve been telling Fran all about it. About how we’re going tonight.”
“Yeah, well, fuck Fran,” Fitzi said. “Besides, you know there’s something in their sauce that makes me feel queasy in the middle of the night.”
“The fries taste terrible here, Jack. They never change the oil.”
“Well, I ain’t made of money,” Fitzi said. “And I don’t feel like driving to the city just to get cheese curds.”
“Alright,” she said. “We can stay. But I wanna go next week.”
They ordered burgers and drank more beer. His wife smoked more cigarettes. When their food came, they bowed their heads prayed over it, “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive….”
After the food, drink and a generous tip, Fitzi was left with sixty-seven bucks.
His wife asked, “So, we going to church in the morning?”
Fitzi said, “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, Jack. Not again.”
“Sam, don’t start. You know I love Jesus. You know I love Jesus more than anything.”
“I know, but what’ll I tell Fran? And Pastor Tom? He stopped the other day asking about us.”
“Tell them I’m sick.”
“Again? They’re not gonna believe it. They see your van parked here all week. They know you ain’t sick, and I don’t like to lie, especially to a pastor.”
“Well, why they got to be so nosey? Why do they bother keeping tabs on me? Serves them right to be lied to if they can’t mind their own business.”
“They live in the neighborhood, Jack. Everybody knows you’re here all the time. You might as well live here. Please, don’t make me lie. It ain’t Christian.”
“Then what are you gonna do? Tell them the truth? That I ain’t got enough for the tithe?”
“You got enough, even if it’s not much.”
“It’s not enough. I like being generous. I’m too generous for my own good,” Fitzi muttered, half-drunk. “A man who can’t properly tip isn’t meant for decent company. It’s a tell of a good guy. If I can’t leave a nice offering, then I ain’t going. I ain’t gonna be embarrassed by having to leave a measly tip. I got pride, Sam.”
After loosing at cards and with the bar tab and a generous tip, Fitzi was left with just enough to keep him in the next card game. He’d have to lay low on Sunday, unless he could find somebody to loan him some more money. He looked down the bar. He didn’t see anybody he felt confident enough to pull aside.
Fitzi used to have a job, but he found a way out with having bum knees. But that gamble hadn’t paid off. It just turned into another form of work. The labor of just skating by. The toils of the constant grifts. The fine and subtle art of knowing who had the temperament and enough money to lend him time and time again until he’d wring that cloth dry. Good friends who inevitably turned bad after growing wise to the pulling of the strings of their once sacred friendship. It was a subtle artform, finding the right mark. A mark of generous heart and gullibility. And, just as important, one who’d lend without blabbing about it, since Fitzi needed to maintain appearances. He couldn’t be seen as a pauper. After all, how could he remain emperor of Anne’s Tavern if he was to appear with no clothes?
He thought getting out of the rat race was what he needed. It turned out to be just another high-wire act. It turned out to be just as hard maintaining appearances off the government’s dime than it was having a job. Every day was still a grind, even filled with lazy hours of the luxuries of beer and poker and meals with generous tips. All he’d done was exchange physical labor for the grind of the everyday hustle. The hustle of probing relationships and other people’s talents for his own gain. It turned out to be a lot of work, remaining constantly keen to ways of turning a few bucks. It turned out to take a lot of effort maintaining appearances, not unlike a glamor model of fifty clenching the façade of looking twenty-one.
He’d abandoned any real work for the life of the grift. And it shows in his 340 pound frame. His bad teeth and equally bad manners. His inability to walk two blocks from his home to the bar without crippling pain in the knees, back, and hip. It shows in the rusting shitbox of a van, requiring the constant attention of numerous hustles to keep it alive.
It shows in an utter lack of tact and social grace, worn down to normalcy from years of the same company. A profound stupidity he’s grown accustomed to, like the stench of his own breath or armpits. It shows in having no sense of boundaries and intense deficiencies of social and emotional intelligence, whose unconditional acceptance are necessary conditions for the foundation of any personal bond.
It shows in his cardboard morality. It shows in his ignorance, raging like the sun, but seen and understood as a distant star at night.
It shows in mimicry and pantomime understood as creativity and originality.
It shows in a kaleidoscope of hypocrisies bellowed through transparent panes of virtue.
For once he was glad for the blaring music, muddying his words to everyone but his wife.
He leaned in. “I mean, we already owe your dad five grand. I need new tires. Brady’s birthday. And that home equity loan. Damn.”
In her lowest voice, Sami asked, “You talked to the guy about our problems?”
“Yeah. The loan guy online. He’s working on some stuff. Says he can get us sorted out.”
The song ended. Sami waited for the next to begin.
“We’re in over our heads,” Samantha said. “We sure are. That’s why we ought to be going to church. God might set us straight and help us out of this pinch.”
“I wanna go,” Fitzi pleaded. “But I got too much pride, Sam. You know that. You know how they drop twenties and fifties in the collection plate like they’re nothing. We can’t afford to do that. And I know they’re watching. Watching to see who puts in a five or a ten. They’re looking to the side. They’re peeping over our shoulders. They talk. I can’t afford a fifty tomorrow. And I ain’t gonna be a skinflint to Jesus by dropping a five.”
Fitzi would gladly be one of those skinflints, so long as nobody but he and Jesus knew.
He always stared into that offering plate as it passed – a cornucopia of succulent legal tender. He easily rang up a thousand dollars as it neared the end of its passing. He coveted those offerings the same way he coveted the stacks of Lucky Jim’s poker chips, but he couldn’t find the angle to get any of it for himself, so he couldn’t help but calculate a tithe as a pure loss.
He wondered, sometimes, if he pled his case to the congregation and the pastor, if they wouldn’t be willing to help him out. Maybe if he told them how ashamed he was to have so little to sacrifice to Jesus, they’d wanna help nurture his broken spirit by offering him some bones.
He’d even tested the waters once. The pastor’s the one to pour your troubles into. He’s a confidante. One Sunday morning, after service, he told Pastor Tom about his money troubles and how heavily they weighed on his soul. Money troubles that weren’t Fitzi’s fault. It was all a matter of bad circumstances. His troubles were all downstream from having the lousy luck of bad knees.
Pastor Tom’s advice had been to pray, and he hinted at Fitzi spending less time at the bar and more at church.
Pastor Tom encouraged him to hand his troubles over to the Lord. In his heart, Fitzi wished for nothing more than to pass his troubles onto Pastor Tom. Or, he imagined, some charitable member of the congregation might catch wind and offer some help. That’s what he’d hoped for. Christianity, as he understood it, was all about giving and generosity, so there was always a glimmer of hope for salvation within the church.
“Nobody cares about how much we tithe,” Sami told him. “Nobody’s paying any attention.”
“Yeah, they are.”
“How do you know?”
“Cause I pay attention. I see all the twenties and fifties. That’s how I know.”
Sami tipped her bottle. She took a deep drag of her cigarette.
“You know, it’s not pride that keeps you away, Jack. It’s your vanity. You can’t stand that people look better than you, dropping more money than us in the plate. Showing up dressed better than us. Talking about going on vacations we can’t afford. It’s your vanity, not your pride, Jack.”
“Shut up.”
It was true. At the bar, among the vagrants and other vagabonds, Fitzi is on an even keel with most. And the ones he’s not, he either avoids or cozies up to with tales of his generosity and piousness, so long as he finds an angle for doing so. Otherwise, they’re a waste of his beer soaked breath.
A shadow passed through the window. Fitzi hoped it wasn’t Jake. He owed Jake money. He was hoping to see Dale. He hadn’t asked Dale for money in a while. Dale might lend him some money. And he’s good about keeping quiet about it – the hallmark of a real friend. And he surely didn’t know about the money Fitzi owed Jake since Jake, as a good friend, had promised secrecy about the loan.
He hoped the shadow wasn’t that dickhead, Dallas, either, who he’d considered a very close friend until, without warning or provocation, he ghosted Fitzi. Once he caught on to the silent abandonment, he messaged Dallas, saying he turned out to be a lousy friend and, if their falling out was over money, then Dallas never should have loaned it to him in the first place.
The door opened. It wasn’t Dallas or Dale or Jake. It was a newcomer. He passed Fitzi at the bar. Fitzi greeted him with a smiling, “How you doing, buddy?”
The new guy nodded on his way past.
Fitzi turned to his wife.
“Asshole. I asked how he was doing and he didn’t say nothing back.”
“Maybe he’s got other things on his mind.”
“Nah. He’s an asshole. I got a way of reading people. He’s probably a fucking Democrat. Did you see that hair? Long hair is for pussies.”
“Judge not lest the be judged, Jack.”
“Will you stop with that? Why you gotta be so serious? All I’m saying is he’s got a stupid haircut.”
Sami gave pause to allow her husband to reflect, hoping but knowing he wouldn’t.
“Jack, maybe we can find a church that isn’t so fancy,” Sami said.
“We’re not switching to a poor church,” Fitzi said. “We’re not going to no church in a strip mall or somebody’s basement. We ain’t poor.”
“Maybe we are. We owe lots of money we don’t have. What do you call that, if it ain’t being poor? Remember Pastor Tom’s sermon about pride and vanity? He preached we gotta drop all that in order to reach salvation. Maybe that’s what we need, Jack.”
“Shut up. You’re my goddamned wife. How do you think it makes me feel for you to say we’re poor? Don’t we have everything we need? Why would you say we’re poor?”
“Yes. We’re blessed. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Lord, for being ungrateful.”
“Damn right, we’re blessed. I thank the Lord for my blessing everyday. And so should you, Sam. Besides, I’ve been thinking. When we’ve gone to church, nothing’s changed. So I don’t think it matters if we worship at church or at home.”
Sami took another long drag and coughed.
“You shouldn’t have played cards tonight, Jack. You shouldn’t have lost. How much did you lose?”
“Never mind how much I lost. I gotta play. They’re my games. How’s it gonna look if I ain’t got the money to play in my own card games? Hell, I’ve been running these games for years. I can’t stop now. It would look bad.”
“Just tell ’em you’re sick. Tell ’em you’re sick like you want me to tell Fran. And keep the money and we’ll take it to church instead of wasting it in cards games.”
“I can’t,” Fitzi said. “They’re my games. I’m invested. It’s been years of my life. They’re about the only thing I got.”
“Don’t forget, Jack, you’ve always got me, and you’ve always got Jesus.”
“Amen.”
The barmaid, a new girl, came over and asked if they were doing okay. They looked at their near-empty bottles and both said, “Yeah.”
Sami said, “Thanks, hon, but we’re leaving after these.”
“You know, I should have won that last hand, Sam. Had a full house, but I got beat by Jimmy’s four of a kind.”
“Lucky Jim. Damn.”
“I mean, we’d be sitting pretty now if I’d won that last hand. I’d have been in second or third. I felt the momentum swinging my way. We could be sitting pretty on two or three hundred right now. I’d have been in second or third, and we’d have called the game and we’d have plenty for the collection plate tomorrow morning.”
He looked around and whispered, “I even prayed, you know. I prayed that last hand was gonna be mine. And off that hand I was gonna build. And off that stash, we’d have enough money to take us to church tomorrow and show Jesus and the rest of ’em how much we really love him.”
“But you lost.”
“Yeah. So I’m thinking God doesn’t want us there anyway. Not tomorrow morning, at least. If he wanted us there, he’d have let me win.”
Fitzi got out his money.
“You sure we’re not poor, Jack? You sure we’re not broke?”
“We’re not poor. The loan guy wouldn’t be ready to offer us a loan if we were poor. We’re just as good as anybody else. Just as good. Even better, cause we got each other.”
“And Jesus.”
“Yes. Of course. Jesus.”
“Amen.”
Fitzi finished counting his money.
It was still sixty-seven bucks. He’d forgotten, in addition to the twenty-five to buy into Monday’s card game, he’d need some money for beer and food and tips. Beer money he barely had. Money he only had two days to find somebody besides his wife to borrow it from.
He told his wife, “Wait here a minute. I’m going over the liquor store and buy a ten dollar scratch off.”
“Okay,” she said.
She closed her eyes and prayed they’d win. That way there was still a chance they might make it to church in the morning. Unless, of course, they won big. If they won big, that’d be reason to celebrate with a nice Sunday brunch somewhere, while praising God over their eggs and fried chicken for their good fortune.
Sami thought, “We’ll even invite Fran. I can tell her it’s our treat.”
Fitzi crossed the street. He felt Saint Cajetan walking with him.
He gave the clerk ten dollars.
“Precious Diamonds,” he said. “And make it a good one.”
The clerk tore off the ticket and handed it over.
The ticket proclaimed “Win up to $1,000,000!”
Fitzi took the ticket back to the bar.
Sami pulled a dime from her purse and gave it to her husband. Before the coin touched the ticket, she said, “Wait. We need to pray.”
They bowed their heads.
Fitzi gave the prayer, “Miracle-Working Father, I ask for Your blessing, now, in securing my family’s future. Free us of the bondage of debt, which leads us astray. Bless us with good fortune, Lord, so that we may carry forward as Your vessels, assisting the needy, our family, our church and community. Help us be good stewards of money so that we may better serve You. Amen.”
“Amen.”
mrobins71 