Up in the Air

Only the HandStar is indispensable, if only for nine more hours or so. Its flight schedules, mileage charts, and activity logs will tell me when I’ve passed over my meridian. After that, the trash. My credit cards, too. The fewer numerical portals into my affairs, the fewer intruders. I may keep one Visa so I can pump my gas without having to face a human clerk, but I’ll toss the rest on the unloved-numbers dump. 787 59643 85732, you may no longer act as my agent. Permission denied. My phone I’ll retain in case I witness a car wreck and can be of aid. The boots stay, too. To help me walk the surface of the earth and look silly doing it, which is how I’ll feel. Not forever, I hope, but certainly at first.

I check out by remote, via the TV, and ride the elevator to the casino, where I notice a few of the players from last night still humped up over the tables and machines, though not the fellow who copped my lucky blackjack stool, who’s probably out yacht-shopping by now, nagged by a faint sense of illegitimacy he’s drinking hard to mask.

I’m almost out the door and MythTech-bound, heading for a rear exit to miss Craig Gregory, when I fix on a familiar profile alone at a corner mini-baccarat table. They got him. I’m devastated. They waylaid Pinter. There he is, stubbly, strung out on the odds, a monk who ventured from his cell just once and plunged straightaway down Lucifer’s rabbit hole. It’s my duty to try to haul him out.

It takes him a moment to see me once I’ve sat down. This game of no skill and one binary decision—Player or Banker; an embryo could do it—has fossilized his nerves. The whites of his eyes are the color of old teeth, and so are his old teeth.

“I was just getting up to come hear you speak,” he says. Optimistically.

“I was up against CEO-to-be-announced. I bowed out. How’s it going over here?”

“Better and better. I’m almost back to even.” He wets his gray lips and commits two chips to Banker, then has an epiphany and shifts to Player. If he wins this, he’ll think he has the touch. If he loses he’ll think he had the touch, but doubted himself. He’ll resolve not to doubt himself and keep on playing.

“Have you thought any more about the Pinter Zone?”

He smashes out a hand-rolled cigarette. “I’ve decided to license those rights to Tony Marlowe. I’m sorry. I planned to tell you at your talk.”

“May I ask why?” As if I don’t know, and as though I care now. Marlowe’s a smiler. He grooms. He follows up. The perennial philosophy.

“You may, but my answer would only make you feel bad.”

Fair enough. But he stabs me anyhow. “You’re a graduate of my seminars,” he says. “Marlowe’s not. His brain’s not full of goop. He sees me for what I am, another businessman, not an avatar. It takes the pressure off. You, I would have disillusioned.”

Wrong. Watching him kill himself to get “back to even” (where but in Las Vegas is reaching zero considered an accomplishment?) has already done that job.

“You seeing the general this afternoon?” he says. “This man won a massive set-piece desert battle. Imagine the confidence that must instill.”

“I’ve heard him. I’ve gotten all he has to give. I’m off to Omaha. Spack and Sarrazin.”

“Say hello to them for me.”

He chooses Banker. Loses. The El Dorado of evenness recedes before a new grail: bankruptcy with dignity. I buy a few chips. I’ll join him in his ruin.

“I’m not even sure I still want to work for them. I might live on my savings for a year. Read the classics.”

“The classics will just depress you. I fled a country nurtured on the classics and everyone there was drunk or suicidal. Keep occupied. Work. Earn money. Help others earn money. Ignorance of the classics is your best asset. If MythTech shows interest, accept. Don’t ponder Dante.”

I’ve won two hands, that fast, and I can see the swinging pocket watch of last night’s trance. I collect my chips and scoot my stool back, rise.

“Stay. You’re the charm,” says Pinter. “Five more hands. I’m back within striking distance of where I stood when I felt I was starting to catch up.”