“That should get the job done,” the woman said with a wink, handing Walter a large Americano with an extra shot. “Little early in the semester for an all-nighter, isn’t it?”
Walter smiled awkwardly as he accepted the drink, trying to think of something witty to say. He hated small talk, as a rule, but this barista was the subject of many undergraduate fantasies. Now here she was initiating conversation with him, and Walter couldn’t find a clever word to save his life. Half of him desperately wanted this interaction to be over, and half of him was imagining how the campus would react to the sight of her on his arm.
Say something!, his brain screamed at him. He cleared his throat a little. “Actually, I’m going to play poker.”
Perhaps it was wistful thinking, but the woman seemed to perk up. “Oh yeah? Poker, huh?” Was that genuine interest in her voice? Walter felt his anxiety rising. Legend though she was, he had never considered this woman a potential romantic partner. It’s not that she wasn’t attractive; more that she seemed so hopelessly out of his league that fantasizing about her would depress him more than it would arouse him.
Besides, she wasn’t a student, as far as he knew. Like most of the hourly employees on campus, she was probably from the surrounding community, working at this coffee shop because the university was one of the only employers in the economically blighted neighborhood. If anything, she must look at students like him as immature and over privileged, spoiled by opportunities she never had.
“Yeah,” Walter said, adding, “I’m just learning. But I really enjoy it.” He forced himself to make eye contact as he spoke, but he sustained it for only a few seconds, as he began to fear that he might seem creepy and aggressive rather than engaging.
He was tempted to tell her about his trip to the library in search of poker books, how he’d walked through (he assumed) her neighborhood and stared down some rough men. Would that impress her? He knew that most of his fellow students had never set foot there.
Of course that wouldn’t impress her, he scolded himself. That’s her daily life. To present that experience as some kind of adventure would make him look even more sheltered and oblivious than he was.
“Cool,” she said. “My boyfriend plays poker.”
It wouldn’t be right to say that Walter’s hopes were dashed, because he’d never really thought he had a chance, but he did feel foolish for mistaking friendly chatting for flirting. He reminded himself of the lesson he’d learned from his recent excursion, the one that he intended to bring with him to tonight’s game: people are bored. They’re just looking for a diversion, a little entertainment. This woman spoke to him because she had literally nothing better to do, that was the truth of it.
Walter managed half a smile and turned towards the door.
“Good luck!” she called after him.
“Thanks,” he muttered without looking back.
The embarrassment of that moment was quickly lost amidst the excitement of poker. Once the cards were in the air, nothing that happened before or after mattered. There was only the now, the potential that adhered to each card before it was revealed, the exultation of the dragged pot, and the breath-stopping fear whenever an opponent reached for chips.
Walter won right away, and he kept on winning. He played good cards, mostly, and for once they held up against his opponents, who, he saw now, really were just goofing off. He played some bad ones, too, when the price was right, and on more than one occasion he parlayed them into a straight or flush and squeezed a few bets from one of these drunken goofs.
It wasn’t long before the jokes started. Walter should have known better than to show up with coffee in hand when he knew everyone else would be drinking beer. They didn’t always have the discipline to fold to him, but he could see in their eyes that they wanted to. There was a dramatic change in the amount of “goofing off” that occurred after Walter raised; he could sense that. And when players were passing him their chips, they did so with a spitefulness that they seemed to reserve only for him.
Nonetheless, Walter won. He won big. Not quite enough to make up for his past losses, but enough that he could see the road to Even stretch invitingly before him. A few more steps, one more night like this, and he would be there.
He knew that not every night could be like this, but he only needed one more. One or two. It wasn’t just the money, though that was great. It was the feeling that he’d done it, that he’d finally cracked the puzzle that had vexed him for weeks.
There was a time when Physics made him feel this way, when he’d thrilled at finally completing a particularly difficult problem set. Indeed, as a student he’d chased this high for years, the praise of parents and teachers as he struggled and eventually overcame the challenges they’d painstakingly planned for him.
But that was running someone else’s obstacle course. They’d built it, they’d decided where it would lead, and most frustratingly, they’d designed it for him to succeed. Each hurdle they placed in front him had been carefully selected to teach him something, to mold him into something.
Poker was different. The puzzles, he could see, were infinite, each opponent a new set of gears, pulleys, and springs whose internal workings he’d need to deduce. And these problems weren’t tractable, there was no solving them, because they fought back, morphing into something more difficult each time a solution came into sight.
Walter arrived at the game with sixty dollars, and he now had more than a hundred, most of it tucked in his sock in anticipation of his walk home across the dark campus. Best of all, he never put more than his initial twenty dollar buy-in at risk.
A dark figure lurched out of the night, yanking Walter’s attention abruptly from the inside of his head. “I apologize if I startled you,” the man began, in a tone that made clear these words were merely the opening of a long monologue. “I’m not dangerous!” He held up his hands to show that they were empty.
This was a calculated move, Walter saw. The man knew not only that Walter would be nervous but that he would feel guilty about his nervousness. This gesture was intended to alleviate the fear but heighten the guilt. Shame on you, it said, for assuming that every black man you encounter is a threat.
This was not a fair reproach, Walter felt. He was alone, with $100 – a week’s pay – tucked in his sock, and suddenly aware of just how desolate the campus was at this hour. Of course he would be paranoid. Anything else would be irrational. That said, the stranger really did not seem threatening. He was clean cut, with a friendly smell and no hint of substance abuse to him. He also did not seem inclined to give Walter any room to protest his innocence.
“My name is James McCree,” the man continued. “I’m forty-two years old. My wife passed away last year, and I’m trying to raise three daughters on my own.”
Walter opened his mouth to express ritual condolences – he’d decided his best course of action was to play along, though the routine was far too rehearsed to carry any credibility – but James was on a roll now and would not be interrupted.
“I worked laying brick, I’ve always worked for a living, but two months ago I injured my back. Lost my job, lost my insurance, and I’m in danger of losing my home.”
Walter felt awkward and eager for this conversation to end, but it was different than talking to the woman at the coffee shop. Then, he did not know what to say. Now, there was nothing for him to say, no room for him to speak. He was an unconsenting audience to this one man show. Walter reached into his pocket, willing now to pay simply to end this performance, and withdrew a bill.
James saw it, but amazingly, he neither reached for it nor missed a beat in his story. “I’ve got another job all lined up to start in two weeks, just as soon as my back recovers. I just need a little help making ends meet until then. It wounds my pride to ask it, but I’m a father and I have to think of my children. Can you help me out with a few dollars? I’m just trying to feed my little girls.” He was determined to run the script through to the end despite the bill already fluttering in Walter’s outstretched hand.
Walter had intended to give him a dollar, but not wanting to leaf openly through a wad of bills and knowing that all of the tens and twenties were hidden in his sock, he’d simply taken one from his pocket. He noted with consternation that it was a five. Oh, well. Swapping it out now didn’t seem like an option.
James accepted the bill without acknowledging its size. “God bless you,” he said rotely. “You have a blessed evening.”
“You too,” Walter said. He held his ground and let James walk away first. He still didn’t perceive the man as a threat, but there was no harm in being cautious. Once he could proceed while keeping James in his peripheral vision, he did so.
The five dollars rankled him, but it was a fraction of his winnings, and honestly a part of him thrilled at his largesse. Walter had never imagined himself as the sort of person who could pull a bill from his pocket without looking at it and bestow it upon a beggar.
It was a powerful feeling, and he wanted more of it. Ridiculously, he glanced in the window of the coffee shop as he passed, but it was dark, and the woman was not there.
