A Sad Tale Of Three Sixes, Four Vodka Tonics And One Empty Sock

(Writer's note: The names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent—namely, me. Besides, there is a certain amount of honor among poker players, even those who call home to say they are working late. And, for three excellent reasons, a writer can't take a notebook, camera or tape recorder into a big-money poker game. One: he might bet them. Two: the items would restrict concentration. Three: the man who let me play would have snapped me in half like a cardboard $50 chip.)

I pulled my giddy-green automobile in front of a large ranch house with an enormous lawn, the kind that requires a full-time graze from a few yard men. I set the emergency brake. The emergency brake in my car doesn't work, but I like to hear it click. It sounds like a roulette wheel. I was here to have a go at the hedges, the kind of hedges that protect you from inflation, that is.

I knocked on a door that I would have been proud to call my wall, and was admitted by a butler who eyed me as though he wanted to frisk me for garden tools. The mansion was part-sunken, part-elevated. It was bejeweled with oils and watercolors and sported a light fixture that the house had evidently been built around. I glanced in the mirror by the door and straightened my stop-the-presses-the-jury's-in, I-got-an-ace-in-the-hole green eyeshade. I plucked my suspenders, I waved at the mirror. No family silver or candlesticks here, boys.

Poker is an old-time recreation. It's a throwback to the head-'em-up-move-'em-out days when men were men, women did the cancan, and the suggestion of a hand of Seven-Card stud, pay to pass, one shuck at the end, would get you hurt. Poker accommodates imagination. All you need are chips. Put a man behind three of a kind, blow some smoke in his face, give him a pull of straight whiskey, and he could whip his weight in irate wives.

I had been playing in a golf tournament. It was one of those rare golfing events where they pair you on your ability, not net worth, and in the true spirit of country-clubism, I was trying to forget that I belonged in the "Y" family plan. (I still think I really could keep up with the Joneses, if they would only get back from Rio.) My partner, thrilled to discover that I could make a double bogey on the 18th hole to put a lock on "C" Flight, had asked if I wanted to play poker with his friends sometime. I said sure. He said tonight, 8 p.m.

So there I was at the oversize ranch house. I had cleverly stashed $50 in my left sock. Having played dollar-limit and pot-limit, I've discovered that folding money is better for that purpose, because change makes a give-away jingling in your socks. As I sat nervously sizing up the four other players, my legs crossed, my right one kicking field goals, I had the distinct impression that I had been called up to the majors too soon. It occurred to me that I needed another season of polish with the subway set.

"Relax," I said to myself. Aloud. The four other players looked at me. I smiled weakly. They kept looking at me, and I remembered that part of my pregame strategy was to breathe all the time.

They made small talk, and I nodded and smiled every time I heard something familiar like Tiffany's, April in Paris, Vegas and Vero Beach.

I felt like Baltic on a Monopoly board. Everybody seemed to own a company except me. After you own a company long enough, you begin to look like it.

The host was a bulbous man in his mid-50s, who had a red face, the better to disguise flushes with. He combed his hair straight back with much liquid. He was in oil.