"The All-Nighter" [Part 1]

It feels chilly tonight. It’s probably no colder tonight than it’s been all week, but with the way my luck’s running today, everything – including the cards dealers have been sliding my way – seems a bit frostier. It’s gotta end at some point, I tell myself for the billionth time in the past twenty-four hours. I wish I could say I still believed it.

On the other hand, I guess a part of me must believe it. Why else would I be out in the rain at 2 in the morning, strolling through the wrong part of town, headed towards the Cent, of all places? If word on the street is worth anything, millions of dollars change hands at the Centennial Card Club every week, so naturally the sharks haunt the place like poltergeists. I know I’m running headlong into trouble, headed toward surefire bankroll suicide. But something keeps me walking. I guess they call it desperation.

When a poker player makes a move up to a bigger game, they call it “taking a shot.” You move up a level; you move all-in; you lose your stake; you move back down; you move on. Tonight I’m moving into a bigger game, to put it mildly. You could say I’m taking a shot, but actually, it’s more like a long shot. But if I take this shot and miss, there won’t be any moving back down to a smaller game. Other people are gonna start taking shots. At me.

And I’m pretty sure they won’t miss.

My thoughts as dark as the night, I finally reach the Cent. The outside is about as run-down as I’d imagined. I knock once, as I was instructed, and after a moment the door cracks slightly open.

“You know what time it is?” comes a husky female voice.

“A quarter to jail-time,” I reply, also as instructed.

The door opens the rest of the way. I take off my hat and walk into a hall. The owner of the voice is nowhere to be seen.

“You born in a barn?” says the voice, with some edge. I sheepishly reach back and close the door, and walk down the short hall. There’s a cashier’s cage at the end, and seated there is the woman I spoke with. She looks about how she sounds. How the hell did you open the door from here? my facial expression asks her. She ignores the question. Just pulls out a few empty, plastic chip-racks and sets them on the counter in front of her. “How much?”

I reach into my coat pocket and pull out what’s left of my roll. Twelve thousand dollars is all I’m worth anymore – after draining my bank accounts and selling everything I could on such short notice. It’s all come down to this. I slide the stack of bills under the iron bars in her direction. She counts it faster than I would have thought possible, and begins filling up racks. My entire roll amounts to a measly hundred and twenty chips. One hundred and twenty chips that need to multiply several times over if I’m gonna see daybreak.

She slides the racks, one full, one nearly empty, in my direction. “Our smallest game is $100-200 Hold ‘Em. Walk right through there.” I bristle at her assumption that I’ll have to start out in the small game, but there’s not much I can say. Sometimes the truth hurts.

So quietly, rigidly, I turn and head towards the cardroom. Even though it’s 2am, the night’s just getting started.


[To be continued ...]