Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje [18]
The Gentile records their theoretical credits and debits on a chart. By now Cooper already seems to owe him $30,000. ‘Whoever loses rides into Miniver for groceries,’ The Gentile announces, ‘and I don’t mount horses or mules.’ Another night he raises the stakes. ‘If you win, you may sleep with Lina. Try dealing from the middle of the deck. Anything goes tonight. If I catch you at it, the bet is cancelled. If you win, you can show that affection I know you have for her.’ Cooper is deeply embarrassed. ‘Some say I won Lina in a card game,’ The Gentile continues, ‘though in fact she won me in that card game. But of course I was the dealer. The CIA believes you can break anyone, turn anyone, if you know their weakness. It’s usually sex, always number one, then money, or power. Now and then pride and vanity. What about you?’
They play with their scotch glasses balanced on the windowsill. ‘It’s easy being a mechanic playing a large table, so let’s limit ourselves to a small one. Also, Vegas has distractions. We don’t. So you can watch me carefully.’
Thus begins the second week of a more illicit education. How to be an undiscovered cardsharp. ‘It’s something we are not naturally inclined to do,’ Axel murmurs, ‘to handle things with skill and grace and make it appear that nothing is happening. You need to give the illusion of the unexceptional. Slow down your deal, in fact deal like a sucker. Then you can vanquish them. Now, show me your crimp work.’ It is clear to Cooper that, as far as Axel is concerned, Vegas needs to be buried under the sands. ‘I look at this military base and have high hopes that Vegas will end up the same, with entombed singers and comedians. A thousand years from now we will dig up the tomb of the great Wayne Newton, and he will be a god again.’ Axel never stops talking. Cooper is reminded of hitchhikers who enter a car and rattle off biblical quotations with chapter and verse to prove that the end of the world will arrive before the weekend. The Gentile lectures about manner and style and focus. ‘I am told that Tolstoy,’ he says, ‘was able to walk into a room that held a small group of people and understand everything about them in fifteen minutes. The only person in the room he could not understand was himself. That’s what a good professional is like.’
The Gentile shuffles and deals quickly and angrily, listing what he loves in the world he has left—espresso, plots in Donald Westlake novels, the flavour of chipotle chilies—and Cooper keeps watching the deal. If he accuses The Gentile and he is wrong, he forfeits a thousand. ‘Just a thousand,’ Axel says. ‘Normally if we are falsely accused, we pick up a handgun and blast your shoulder off. And don’t forget— if you win this evening, Lina is beyond the door. I’ll sleep in the tent. Probably howl like a wolf in jealousy. But a deal is a deal. I told her, and she approves of the stakes, by the way. I read of a similar bet in a Faulkner story.’ ‘Don’t distract me,’ Cooper says. ‘I am distracting you. You missed two corrupt shuffles, during the story about Tolstoy. You were listening, there was content there, there was a maze-like thought there. You have to forget the content, think about the wheel… .’
Two in the morning. Cooper rises and marks his losses on the chart that’s tacked to the varnished door. There is utter frustration in him. He thought he was skilled. ‘Do you know what the best line in a movie is?’ The Gentile asks, still in his seat.
‘You can tell me that tomorrow,’ Coop says. ‘Good night.’ In the other room Lina says, ‘You lost, right?’ He doesn’t know whether she really is aware of the absurd stakes proposed by Axel. She takes his hand. ‘Great hands. So Axel tells me. Good night.’ Cooper treads through the darkness, enters the tent, and is asleep instantly. A few minutes later he wakes to their loud laughter.
The two of them break from cards one night and walk with Lina for hours along a dry riverbed. They clamber to higher ground, where it is even darker, there’s hardly a moon, and Coop feels barely attached to the