Temporary Greatness
The chips pile up, people notice, and Bob starts behaving like a man touched by fate.
It got out of hand on a Thursday.
By the end of the night Bob was standing behind a table covered edge to edge in banded bricks of cash, with more chips scattered across the felt in front of the money than he could reasonably count. He held a brick in each fist over his head. He was smiling in a way Bill had never seen before and hopes not to see again.
The last hand of the night was the seven of diamonds and the two of hearts. It is the worst starting hand in hold'em. Bob played it anyway, and it won, and he left the two cards standing upright against the pile afterward so that everyone could see them.
A crowd formed behind the table. It included dealers, floor staff, several players who had busted earlier and returned to watch, a sheriff's deputy in a tan uniform and a man in a dark suit with a name badge who stood very still at the end of the rail and smiled at Bob for the entire evening. Nobody knows who the man in the suit was. Bill noticed him and wrote it down.
People were now taking Bob seriously. Strangers asked for his opinion on hands. Someone referred to him as a player. Bob accepted all of it as though it had always been coming to him, which is the part Bill found most concerning.
This was new behavior. Bill's notebook, which had previously tracked expenses, began tracking Bob. The first entry under the new heading reads, in full, that this is concerning.
All of Chapter 1: The Vegas Trip →