Pocket Kings (8 page)

I promised Beverly, who's never done one single thing wrong to me other than have the gall to be more successful, that I would take a look at it. I've got, I said, nothing else to do.

“You're really not working on anything?”

“Well, I have a book out there now. You know, making the rounds.”

I told her that Glenn Tyler at Lakeland & Barker had turned it down but called me a Master of the Suburban Mimetic and compared it to Joseph Conrad's
Th
e Secret Sharer,
and she was pretty impressed. (I left out that my book had given him a kind of spiritual rash.) I said I'd e-mail her a copy.

“You know,” she said, “Deke Rivers is a friend of mine. He runs Last Resort Press . . . they're the most prominent self-publishing house in New York. You could—”

“Nope. Let's drop that idea right away please.”

After being paid money for my first book, after being paid a lot less for my second, paying someone to print my third was doing a face plant on rock bottom and was out of the question. I once worked at a Friendly's and would prefer going back to wearing a hairnet and making Fribbles.

I knew she was just trying to be helpful and I thanked her.

“And the
Plague Boy
movie?” she asked.

“Nothing new on that.
Th
e script's been written. Pacer Burton is still going to direct.”

“So what do you do with your time then?”

Do I dare fess up? Should I keep this to myself? Ah, why not . . .

“Well, Bev, I play poker online, to tell you the truth.”

“You're kidding me, right?”

My lack of words, expression, and movement indicated to her that, no, I wasn't kidding.

“So, uh, do you win at least?” she asked.

“I've won over twenty thousand dollars. I won three grand just before I ran into you. In about twenty minutes as a matter of fact.” Shaving off twenty minutes just to make her ill.

I watched her calculate:
Hmm, it takes me two months to write a short story. . . . if the short story gets published I
maybe
get two thousand dollars for it. . . . this untalented lug who takes his next lunch more seriously than literature wins more than that in less than an hour???

Fifteen minutes later I was home playing poker. On the wall over my desk hung a post-Impressionist self-portrait of a young, hopeful, homesick man in Paris suffering a headache; on the wall behind me was a smaller fauvist still-life of a pear in a bowl. (
Th
ese two paintings were mysteries to all who looked at them.) I sat out of a hand (Foldin' Caulfield had just thrashed my two Jacks with his three Jacks, which he slow-played to perfection) and opened up
Saucier.

Th
is is how it begins:

An hour late to work I'm riding the D train in a short tight black BCBG skirt and not only do I feel Seth the Sommelier dribbling down my right thigh but I also see some of Antonio the Busboy sticking to my left calf.

Okay, this might be just my kind of book.
Food, sex, New York City, food, depravity, and more food.
Maybe I'll actually read it. Maybe I'll even like it.
I hadn't read a book since I'd handed my new one to Clint Reno and have, in fact, had tremendous difficulties buying any other authors' books since the
Times, Time
and
Th
e
Boston
Globe
demolished
Plague Boy.
No, I couldn't even pick up another person's book—sudoku included—until my own was sold.

I gave
Saucier
a shot though. I read fifteen pages of it, about the same length as a
New Yorker
article about the history of the Ipswich clam or an Adam Gopnik essay about how well-read Adam Gopnik is. By page fifteen Janie Carter—Jill Conway's Ivy League–educated, sauce-stirrin', scallop-peelin', busboy-bangin' protagonist—had already had sex with four men, two of them in a restaurant kitchen and one near the day-boat scallops section of the Hunts Point Fish Market, and had purposely placed a booger, a heaping teaspoon of her own saliva, and a pubic hair in a Béarnaise sauce, an order of cassoulet, and a side of sautéed squid, respectively. Ten more pages of this and I'd never eat anything but a homecooked meal again.

Th
ree days later I e-mailed Beverly:

Read the book. Loved it! Couldn't put it down! Here's the blurb:

“Pungent, rich, and delicious, Jill Conway's exquisitely prepared
Saucier
lingers on the palate like a well-remembered ten-course tasting meal. It is the most mouth-watering first novel I've read in quite some time and will leave the reader ravenous for more.”

Hope she likes it.

In the tit-for-tat world of Big Time Literature, I tried to think of some sautéed squid quo pro I could possibly extract from Bev for this. After all, what if the book wound up stinking and sinking, like the aftermath of a well-remembered ten-course tasting meal? If so, I had quite possibly endangered my own good (but rapidly plummeting) name by associating it with this novel. What back-scratching could I get from Bev for the risk I was taking?

A week later—a nice week in which I called in sick two days and won three-thousand dollars online—your bootlicking memoirist e-mailed Beverly:

Darling Bev . . . need a favor and it's a small one. Can you e-mail Clint Reno and pls tell him you adored “Dead on Arrival”? Pretty please? It might light a fire under his butt. I haven't heard from him for a while.
Th
anks. He's at:
[email protected]
.

Oh yes, attached is the book itself! Hope you do like it!

And that was the tit that I'd get for the tat. Five days later (it had taken me three days to read
Saucier
and get back to Bev—even though I'd never really read it—but it took her
five
days to read my e-mail?!), she wrote me back, telling me she'd e-mail Clint first thing and that she couldn't wait to read
DOA.
“Soooo excited,” she said, “to see the Master of the Suburban Mimetic in action! And don't forget, if all else fails, there's Deke Rivers at Last Resort Press.”

Grrrrrr.

Th
ere is rarely a time of day when Cali Wondergal and Wolverine Mommy aren't logged on to the Galaxy.
Th
ey've become best friends and know everything about each other. Whether I log on at 8 a.m. or 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. (a cyberstalker's dream, the site tells you which of your buddies are on and then helps you locate them), they are usually online.
Th
ey may not always be playing or chatting, but they're on. Even when Cali, her husband, and kids went to Paris for a week, she was still playing poker. While her family was out taking in the town, she was in her hotel room with her laptop, trying to take away people's money and talking to Wolve.

People became friends and sometimes more than just friends.

Another person who seemed to always be on the site was a terminally effervescent player named Bubbly Brit Bird, aka Bubb, Bubbly, or just BBB. She lived in some windy, wet town in Cornwall, was in her early forties, had never married. She was chatty and loved to laugh and was logged on to the Galaxy at times when it was impossible for her to be playing: 10 p.m. my time, which was 3 a.m. time her time. But there she was. Playing. It seemed she never slept. Often she'd be at a table with a player called Pest Control. Bubbly's usual avatar is the Blowsy Housewife, a once milfy but now gone-to-seed woman in her forties, and Pest usually played as the leathery-skinned, flinty-eyed, ten-gallon-hatted Cowboy character. Whenever I'd scroll down the screen of tables to see who was playing where and with whom, BBB was with Pest, who had made a ton of money in the extermination business in Edmonton before retiring at fifty-five. Pest was married and a father of three.

It's a common practice for players to create private tables (or “PTs”) in the Galaxy; all it takes is a few clicks.
Th
ese tables can be for two or for ten; the main thing is that the person who “built” the table decides who to let in and who to keep out. A virtual velvet rope of one's own.

Private tables are the No-Tell Motels of the Galaxy although the walls, ceilings, and bed sheets are all transparent.

Bubbly's round-the-clock perkiness was alarming. Not only was she always awake, not only was she always logged on, but she was always in a great mood; she loved everyone and effused joy the way that George W. Bush did befuddlement. Other than a few flirty remarks, Bubbly and Pest just seemed to be friends, friends who'd never met or spoken to each other.

I was playing for—and losing—real money in Medium one afternoon when Second Gunman appeared. He didn't fully click in to play; he just sat at the table (and watched me quickly dump another five hundred).

“At the hotel now,” he told me. “YLO.”

(He was informing me his Yellow Light was On; he could talk now but at any moment his boss might show up. GLO meant the coast was clear and he could chat; RLO meant he couldn't.)

Th
e river card was dealt and I lost $300 to two sixes.

“Chip, you have to come to a FMT in L straight away!” Second said. (A Fake Money Table in Low—Low being the very cheapest tables.)

“Why? I'd much rather lose real money here,” I said. And I wasn't kidding. Somehow, losing a load of real money is a more fulfilling experience than winning a little bit of fake money.

“It's Bubbly and Pest!
Th
ey've got a PT. It's just them! You gotta suss this out ASAP!”

Second Gunman vanished and, after losing $200 with another hand of pure squadoosh, I vanished, too.

It only took a few clicks to find Bubbly Brit Bird's PT. She was playing as the sultry Dragon Lady in the red cheongsam, and Pest was the Cowboy, aka Tex, Hoss, or Clint.
Th
ey had no idea I was watching. Or that Second Gunman was watching. Or that perhaps 25,000 other people around the world may also have been spying on them.

Bubbly Brit Bird:
positively sopping wet right now 4u.

Pest Control:
you're wearing blk?

Bubbly Brit Bird:
blk bra, baby, and blk knickers. nothing else, phil.

Bubb's real name was Georgette. Pest's was Phil.

Pest Control:
georgy my georgy. my sweet georgy. r u touching it?

Bubbly Brit Bird:
y. but w/what? guess.

Pest Control:
your fingers? pocket rocket, lover?

Bubbly Brit Bird:
n. a /toothbrush. the bristly end. where the paste goes.
:)

Bubbly Brit Bird wins $80 with two 7s and two 2s.

Something suddenly popped up . . . it was a dialogue box on the lower right of my screen. Second Gunman was IM'ing me beyond the earshot of Bubbly and Pest.

Second Gunman:
Can you feckin believe this, Chip?

Chip Zero:
Th
is is amazing! I didn't know Pest had it in him. I really didn't.

Bubbly Brit Bird:
what would u do 2 me if u wuz here w/me, baby?

Pest Control:
i'd turn you over and start massaging your neck. slowly. v slowly.

Bubbly Brit Bird:
oooh. can feel your strong hands all over my back. mmmm.

Pest Control:
now I'm going lower with my hands. lower, lower, lower.

Second Gunman:
Any lower, Chip, and he'll be in bloody France!

Th
ey continued playing cards and playing with each other. She unbuckled his trousers and he massaged her. While he kissed her and she moaned, she won the hand with a heart flush. After dropping $300, Pest turned her over and showed her how aroused he was, which in turn aroused her further. He was sexually multi­tasking all over her body, massaging her back while playing with her nipples and fingering her. Unless he was an octopus, it was physically impossible but they were enjoying it . . . and so were Second Gunman and I.

Chip Zero:
Second, I don't claim to be any kinda of expert at these sort of things but I daresay I think these two are going to shag!

Th
e following then popped up on my screen for five seconds:

Plague Boy by Frank W. Dixon

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #590,949 in Books

Yesterday: #584,253 in Books

And then:

Love: A Horror Story by Frank W. Dixon

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #680,158 in Books

Yesterday: #672,273 in Books

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Bubbly cut the foreplay short; while he was busy telling her how he was licking her ears, she informed him that he was already inside her. As soon as he said that, all the massaging and licking stopped, though they did continue to play poker.