Queen of Spades Read online

  Therefore, Chimsky considered it an absolute certainty that any bout that involved Golovkin would not go to a decision. In fact, Golovkin had knocked out his last fifteen opponents, and Chimsky had made money wagering on each of these contests. If only he could have restricted his betting to Golovkin! But of course, there were many other bets during this span of time—in many other sports—that were not nearly as reliable for his gambling bankroll.

  But on August 18, in just three weeks’ time, Golovkin was entering the ring again. His opponent was alleged to be his most challenging yet, although Chimsky did not think so: the stylish former champion Juan “El Matador” Coronado, who was returning after a two-year retirement in order to reclaim the laurels he still believed rightfully his. The rumor on the street was that Coronado was broke and needed the money. Despite the crafty southpaw’s skill, Chimsky could not imagine any scenario where El Matador, now thirty-seven years of age, could defend himself against the marauding Glove of Stone.

  The opening line was generous, with Golovkin only a 3-to-2 favorite. Normally, Chimsky would’ve bet five, even ten thousand on such an attractive number, but his recent losses had escalated in a frightening way, and his bookmaker, Henry Fong, was no longer accepting his bets until some of the debt was paid off. The last time they had spoken, Fong informed Chimsky that he was on the hook for $47,000.

  It was a horrible feeling, knowing the fight could extricate him from this hole, but having no means to bet on it. Chimsky went so far as to ask some of the other dealers at the Royal if they were interested in staking him, but having been dissatisfied with previous tips, they all declined. The days passed and the Thursday before the fight, the line closed to 5 to 4, almost even odds. Chimsky grew desperate. He decided he would risk phoning Barbara and see if she would be willing to extend a hand. They’d spoken sparingly, ever since she’d joined the Snoqualmie chapter of Gambling Help, more than a year and a half ago now.

  One of their rules, she’d told him early on, was that she should refrain from associating with anyone who worked in a casino.

  Their main connection, however—before, during, and even after their marriage—had always been an interest in gambling, and Chimsky hoped the passage of time had brought Barbara to her senses. Before work on Thursday evening, Chimsky composed himself and dialed her number, listening to it ring six times before she answered.

  “What is it, Chim?” She sounded tired.

  “Hi, Barbara,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Why are you calling?”

  “I just wanted to see how you were doing, Barbara—I miss you. Are you still going to that—that thing you were going to?”

  “It’s called Gambling Help, Chim. And yes, I am. In fact, you’re making me late for a meeting right now.”

  “Can’t you skip it? Let’s catch up.”

  “I have to go every day—that’s how this works. You have to be constantly vigilant. And I’m late.”

  “Wait,” Chimsky said. “I’ll make it quick.”

  Barbara sighed. “Okay. What?”

  “I need ten grand,” Chimsky said. “Or even five would help.”

  “Ha! You’re out of your mind, Chim. Even if I had that money, the last person I would lend it to is you.”

  “What if my life is in danger?”

  “Not that I should care, but is it?”

  “I’m on the hook, Barbara. For forty-seven large.”

  A long period of silence ensued, during which Chimsky grew hopeful Barbara was changing her mind. Then she spoke again, very slowly and evenly. “Chimsky, I’m about to walk out this door right now to go to a meeting. I’m trying to get my shit together, and you call out of the blue with all your bullshit, just like before, and I get caught up in it. But not this time. I’m getting better, Chimsky, and I hope someday you realize that you have an illness. Good-bye.”

  “Wait!” Chimsky said. “Don’t you even want to know what the bet is?”

  He heard her phone slamming against its cradle, and then the dial tone.

  The next afternoon, Chimsky left his rooms at the Orleans Hotel and drove to the Royal, where he picked up his biweekly check from the cashier’s cage. He was paid a minimal wage, the amount a mere pittance against his debt, but he had to placate Fong somehow. Afterward, he drove to another hotel across the street from the Orleans, its sister property known as the Oliver. He took an elevator up to the top floor, the seventeenth, walked to the end of the hall, and knocked on the door of 1717, one of the corner suites.

  An enormous man with long blond hair, in a tank top and shorts, answered the door. “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Hey, Quincy,” Chimsky said. “Can you tell Mr. Fong I’m here to see him?”

  “Wait here.”

  After several moments, Quincy returned and ushered him in; Chimsky followed him down a short corridor that opened out into a large living area. There was an entire bank of televisions—a half dozen—stacked on top of one another against a wall. Facing them was a long, circular white couch that surrounded a low coffee table, on which were two different-colored telephones. One was ringing, and the other was in the hand of a very tall, very thin man in a tracksuit, who was sitting on the couch and writing something down in a ledger.

  “Seahawks plus three and the hook,” Mr. Fong was saying into the phone. “Ten on the side and ten on the total, right? Okay. See you next week.” He hung up and ignored the other telephone. “Personal line,” he explained to Chimsky. “You’re looking spry today.”

  Chimsky handed over his paycheck. He watched while Fong looked it over, flipped to a page in his ledger, and made a notation. Quincy was in the kitchen, using a blender.

  “He’s making smoothies,” Fong said to Chimsky. “Do you want one?”

  “Sure,” Chimsky said.

  “Hey, Quincy!” Fong shouted. “Chimsky wants one too!”

  “You got it,” came the voice from the kitchen.

  Fong showed Chimsky his calculations, the new total Chimsky owed minus his paycheck, plus the interest of another week: $46,375.

  “That looks right,” Chimsky said. “Mr. Fong, I actually have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

  “What is it?”

  “The big fight tomorrow night.”

  “It’s a good one. Who do you like? I say Coronado but Quincy says Golovkin by K.O.”

  “That’s what I want to talk about,” Chimsky said. “Can you extend me credit for the fight? I want to bet on Golovkin.”

  Fong laughed. “I thought we discussed this, Chimsky. No more bets for you until you pay down the number.” He pointed at the ledger. “Get it down to less than twenty and we can talk.”

  Chimsky pulled from his pocket a scrap of paper that contained an itemized list he’d made that morning. He passed it over to Fong. “These are my assets,” Chimsky said. “You can see I’ve got a car, a Saab, which is only a few years old, worth twelve grand easy. Then household effects: a new Zenith television, worth two. A nice stereo. A sushi maker. A pasta maker.”

  Quincy returned with three smoothies in tall glasses on a tray. Chimsky took his and drank half of it in short order. It was pineapple flavored and delicious.

  “Quincy,” Fong was saying. “Do you think we need Chimsky’s sushi maker?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Quincy said. “But it can’t hurt.”

  “Those items I’ve listed add up to over twenty grand,” Chimsky said. “It’s all yours if I don’t win this bet.”

  “It’s already all mine,” Fong said. “You owe me forty-seven grand.”

  “Plus my paychecks for the rest of the year,” Chimsky said. “All I need is credit for one more bet, so I can start getting myself out of this hole.”

  “By paying me back with my own money,” Fong said.

  “Yes,” Chimsky said. “By doubling it and then paying you back with it.”

  “And what if Golovkin loses? What then?” />
  “You can have everything.”

  “I told you I already own everything you have,” Fong said.

  “You can own part of me then,” Chimsky said. “I can run errands for you, make you dinner, that sort of thing. Until you feel the debt is paid off.”

  “We may have to break your arms,” Fong said, nodding at Quincy. Then he laughed. “I’m just kidding, Chimsky.” He finished his smoothie and wiped his lips. “How much are you talking about exactly?”

  “Fifty grand,” Chimsky said. “If I win the bet, I’ll win forty grand. That’ll leave me six, seven grand in debt, and I can just work that off.”

  “And if you lose, you’ll owe me almost a hundred,” Fong said.

  “Yes. But Golovkin’s not losing.”

  Fong laughed. “What do you think, Quincy? Should we lend Chimsky another fifty grand?”

  Quincy shrugged. “I think Golovkin’s gonna win too,” he said.

  “You’re going to have to excuse us for a moment.”

  “Sure,” said Chimsky. When he realized Fong meant him, he went back out into the hotel hallway, and closed the door to the suite behind him. He stood there for several minutes, and then he sat down on the carpet to await Fong’s decision. Finally, Quincy opened the door. Chimsky went back inside and stood beside the couch in exactly the same place.

  Fong was regarding him carefully. “Are you sure you want this, Chimsky? You understand the consequences.”

  “Yes,” said Chimsky.

  “It’s done then.” Fong made a notation in the ledger. “Fifty grand on Golovkin it is.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fong,” Chimsky said. “I knew I could count on you.”

  He offered his hand to be shaken, but Fong did not move.

  “Remember, Chimsky—if Golovkin loses, you won’t have a place to rest your ass. In fact, you won’t even have an ass.”

  As Fong returned to his phones, Quincy silently showed Chimsky to the door.

  That evening, as she had for a year and a half now, Barbara went to her seven p.m. meeting and sat in her usual metal folding chair, the one across from Dimsberg, her hands quietly placed in her lap. Typically, she tried to participate, to at least offer a kind word of encouragement to her compatriots, but this meeting, she found herself listening with only half an ear to their litany, and when it was her opportunity to testify, she averted her eyes and declined with a cautious smile. Instead, she found herself spending the hour discreetly examining the other members—their bony countenances, their pale, spectral features, their arms and hands mottled with discolored spots—noticing how none of them seemed to be getting any better, physically speaking at least, as if the effort of staying clean were draining the life out of their bodies. Was the same thing happening to hers?

  Barbara had to suppress a sudden desire to feel the furrows on her own face.

  After the meeting ended—finally!—she rose from her chair, preparing to depart as quickly as was polite, but Dimsberg was already there, obtruding upon her field of vision.

  “Are you feeling all right, Barbara?” he asked. “You seemed kind of quiet, even distant, tonight.”

  She hated hearing her voice responding—obligingly, automatically. “Thanks for asking, Dimsberg. I’ve been swamped at work. I have to hire a bunch of temps this week, and I’ve barely started.”

  “I’d be happy to make some calls on your behalf,” Dimsberg offered. He brushed her shoulder with his hand. Barbara recoiled inwardly, but maintained her smile.

  “Thanks, Dimsberg—but you know, this is something only I can take care of.”

  “Say, Barbara. Maybe we can chat sometime—about your progress, outside of the group . . .”

  Fortunately, at that moment, their social chair stepped in and began asking Dimsberg about the arrangements for their next potluck at the Community Center. Dimsberg appeared annoyed, but fielded the question nonetheless, which afforded Barbara another opportunity to leave.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said hopefully, with his gruesome smile.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  As she drove home from the meeting, the radio off, Barbara ran her fingers over her forehead, feeling the tension slowly ease from her temples. After several moments, she sighed and lit a cigarette using the car lighter: it was the same mournful atmosphere at the Community Center every night, and it had been wearing a little thin for months now. Wasn’t all the suffering a bit too much?

  But it wasn’t just the other members. Not exactly.

  It wasn’t even Dimsberg—their “chapter leader”—though she disliked him most, with his obsequious manner, always apologizing for interrupting and then interrupting. Always touching her, when that was the last thing she wanted.

  No, what was beginning to gnaw at Barbara—what she could only repress for so long—was the urge for action.

  At this realization, she shuddered and had to light a second cigarette. She did not want to go through all that again, what made her join Dimsberg and his doleful crew in the first place. Two winters ago, she’d lost her television, and then her car, and then nearly her job after a manic two-week spree. At her high point, she’d been up over $10,000, but after all was said and done, she’d ended $12,500 in the hole. Worst of all, one awful morning, she was called in at work and told she was being demoted due to her strange, disordered behavior. “Are you on drugs?” one of her supervisors had pointedly asked.

  Barbara had gone to her first meeting of Gambling Help because it seemed the sensible thing to do. There, everyone had spoken so kindly to her, assuring her they knew exactly what she was going through. Especially Dimsberg. Painstakingly, she had reestablished her position in life based on their support: she bought a used car from one member, and another had given her an old television, one that still required her to get up from the couch to switch on. And then, on another awful morning, behind the same closed doors, she had prostrated herself before her supervisors, volunteering for the thorny and thankless election project no one else would touch. She was given her old job back, albeit on a probationary basis.

  Now, with the project looming and her sobriety still intact, Barbara resolved to be stronger. Her life was better without gambling—wasn’t it? But the urge continued to unsettle her, and when she arrived home, she had to play several rounds of Solitaire on the coffee table—winning the last one—before she felt relaxed enough for bed.

  The Referral

  At the end of a long series of scans and tests, his neurologist told Mannheim his brain was riddled with lesions—“think of them as little, expanding holes,” Dr. Sarmiento had said. “They’ve been growing for some time.” Mannheim had been in a state of utter shock and had hardly comprehended the specific medical details she’d explained to him, other than her guess that he was only even odds to survive until the end of the year.

  “What should I do?” he asked. “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t you have family? Anyone close?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Sarmiento, a quick-witted, plain-speaking woman who occasionally gambled at the Royal, placed a heavy hand on Mannheim’s shoulder. “In that case, you should perhaps consider doing more of whatever you like. Damn the costs—don’t leave anything on the table.”

  When she saw his look, she quickly added, “That’s what I would do, in any case.” She handed him a business card for a friend of hers, Dr. Eccleston, a “spiritual counselor,” and said other patients in similar situations had found this sort of guidance helpful.

  Then Mannheim had been allowed the room to himself for as long as he needed.

  Afterward, he had stayed away from the Royal for two days, ignoring the messages accumulating on his machine from his staff. Mannheim was determined to take all at once the entire bottle of sleeping pills Dr. Sarmiento had agreed to prescribe him. But the longer the bottle lay sealed in his medicine cabinet, the less likely that outcome became.

  Finally, the general manager herself, Gabriela, had called. She said that whatever was go
ing on in Mannheim’s life, she didn’t care as long as he came back to work that evening. No questions asked. Moved, Mannheim had reported for his shift that night, and every night in the weeks since. It was the most natural thing to do, passing his remaining evenings among his dealers, in whose light company Mannheim found himself easily adopting a philosophical attitude toward his fate: he was doomed, but wasn’t everyone?

  Still, when he was by himself, it was impossible to forget.

  Dr. Sarmiento said she believed it would feel for Mannheim like he was passing out. But of course, how could she know?

  One morning in August, Mannheim had clocked out near dawn and driven to a twenty-four-hour hardware store. He bought a long, heavy length of rope. The cashier asked him if he was feeling all right, and Mannheim pretended not to hear. After returning home, he climbed up the ladder to his attic and tied the rope—which he had fashioned into a noose—around the rafter beam looking out over the trapdoor that led down into the house. Mannheim placed the noose around his neck, cinched it so he could hardly breathe, and sat on the edge of the open trapdoor, his legs swinging in the open space between floors. All Mannheim had to do was allow his body to fall into that space. He wanted to be thinking a wondrous thought when he did so, in that final snap of consciousness. But in that moment, he could draw only the faintest outlines of events from his memory. Mannheim became frightened—why couldn’t he think of anything—any experience at all—worthy of this final moment?

  Hadn’t he ever been a child, laughing for the sake of it? Hadn’t he ever fallen in love?

  Sitting on his attic floor, regarding beneath him a house that suddenly baffled him, Mannheim lost his nerve.

  Later that day, when Mannheim pulled up to the address on the business card Dr. Sarmiento had given him, he discovered a district of Snoqualmie he hardly ventured into, lined with tattoo parlors, art studios, and coffee shops. After having a falafel sandwich at a corner diner—Mannheim ate out as often as possible now—he walked the unfamiliar streets for the next twenty minutes, marveling at the array of services offered on the storefront signs: tarot card and palm readings, crystal ball, the rolling of bones, etc.