The bar was smoky, but it always was. On busy nights, you could open the door and watch the smoke roll out into the street. In the summer, the humidity would keep it close to the ground so it would drift along the sidewalk and into the street until an errant sea breeze carried it, tattered and torn, off to the piney woods. But it was still fall.
“Hi, I’m Lisa. Can I buy you a drink?”
I looked up at the mirror and saw a girl in profile looking at me. Her hair hid her face, but I didn’t turn to get a better look.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but I kind of want to be alone.”
“OK, ‘I-don’t-mean-to-be-rude’, I’m not going to sit in your lap. It’s just that you look like you could use a drink, and I just scored big at the roulette wheel. So what’ll it be? Is that bourbon?”
“Black Bush. Thanks.”
I still hadn’t turned to look at her, but I saw her face in the mirror as she turned to signal the bartender and I was surprised to see how young she looked. Somehow, her voice, husky and low, made her seem older, but her face, framed with long, glossy, black hair was smooth, unlined.
My drink arrived just as I sucked the last of the old one off of the ice. I put a cigarette in my mouth and shook one out of the pack to offer to Lisa.
“Menthol?”, she asked.
“No. Ultra light. I’m getting more nicotine from the air in here than my cigarettes.”
Lisa reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of her own and pulled one out. I lit it with my Zippo, still without looking at her except in the mirror.
“You should quit,” she said. “You’re not getting anything from them anyhow.”
“So should you.”
There were fluorescent lights under the back bar to light the liquor bottles and they made me look like I’d been dead a week. The smoke wreathing my face made it seem as if I were on a just-lit pyre. Perhaps a victim of the Plague. Lisa’s face looked warm.
Our eyes met in the mirror. “So what has you so depressed?”
“Lisa, that’s a sad, pathetic story and I don’t care to whine. I’d rather just sit here and wallow in it.”
“What? Self-pity?”
“Sure. About five more drinks and maybe I’ll be drunk enough to sleep. Maybe I’ll even cry. I hope not, but you never know. Then Jimmy’ll call me a cab and I’ll go home. Tomorrow, I’ll do it again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”
“Is Jimmy the bartender?”
“Yeah, we’re old buddies. That’s why I come here. I know he won’t let me drive when I drink too much.”
“So. You’re just going to sit here and suck bad air and drink ‘til you fall down.”
I nodded my head. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Must be a woman.”
I turned to look at her for the first time. It was a crappy mirror. Maybe I only looked three days dead. Then I turned away without saying anything.
“Well look, ‘I-don’t-want-to-be-rude--’”
“Andy.”
“What?”
“My name’s Andy.”
“OK. Andy. I don’t want to bug you or anything, but you seem like the safest bet to sit next to in this bar. I don’t like fat lawyers who’ve overstayed Happy Hour,” she gestured toward a loud group next to the ficus, “and I’m not into those frat boy types over there doing shots,” here she pointed with her chin toward the end of the bar, “and, quite frankly, those women behind us have been staring at me like lions at the watering hole since I walked in. I think they might be lesbians.” She sounded shocked, maybe even mildly outraged. “ So I’m not moving. I’ll do all the talking. You don‘t have to respond, but please, be polite and at least pretend to listen.”
She was looking at me in the mirror again, so I nodded. I figured that a long, boring story about a night at the casino was a small price to pay for another whiskey.
“Alright, yak away. And they are lesbians, but they won‘t hurt you.”
“Great! I knew I picked the right guy to sit by.”
She went on to tell me the same dull story you’ll hear a thousand times in a casino town. Down to her last few dollars, she put it all on ‘17’, won, let it ride, won again, let it ride, won again. Here’s where the story was different. She left.
Usually, they say, ‘I shoulda left then.’ What they don’t realize is that the casino’s bread and butter is the ‘I shoulda left’ loser. Everybody has the ‘I shoulda left ’ story.
“Why ‘17’?”
“My age when I lost my virginity.”
“A good memory? Most of the women I know say that their first time wasn’t so great.”
“Oh no, it was good. He was an older man of twenty-five. Very experienced I guess, but it was real good.”
“Well, let me give you a piece of advice,” I said. “Never gamble again. That’s the only way you’ll stay a winner. You’ve got a healthy chunk of the casino’s money, there’s no sense giving it back.”
“Sure, but what fun would that be? I’m not going to gamble anything I can’t afford to lose, and I can afford to lose a lot more now, so what’s the harm? What about you? You live in a casino town and don’t gamble?”
“That’s right. I play poker.”
She looked at me like I was crazy or an idiot.
“Poker isn’t gambling,” I said.
“What are you talking about? It’s all about the turn of the cards, isn’t it? Best hand wins, and that depends on a random shuffle.”
“What cards you get depends on the shuffle, but the best hand doesn’t necessarily win. The player who convinces the other players that he has the best hand wins.”
“Bluffing.”
“Sure.”
“Well, that’s just lying. Don’t you know that’s a sin?”
“So’s gambling, but you gotta keep ‘em off balance. They have to think you’re bluffing when you’re not, and think you got the nuts when you bluff. Even better than bluffing is reading the other guy. If I know when they’re bluffing and when they’re not, I can rape ‘em.”
“I thought poker players all had poker faces.”
“They all think they do, but you’d be surprised how many players get a slight tremble in their hand when they have something hot. They usually try to hide it, so if you notice their fingers making larger dents in the felt than usual…” I pressed my fingers into the bar to demonstrate. “Smokers blow smoke over the table when they’re bluffing and blow it straight up when they’re holding. Simple shit, but most of the tourists don’t know any of that, and the sharks, well, they’re not that hard to spot.”
