The Green Chip

Daniel knew it wasn’t really a problem. He simply got ready for bed, not too late, knowing the solution would present itself in the early morning.

This had always been his superpower. As a B+ student, math major and econ minor, a career consulting Fortune 500s from the discomfort of a thin dark suit had awaited Daniel like the chiropractic interest adjustment of an ARM. Yet this destiny itself was too strong, too inflexible, and so too perversely easy to escape.

Daniel could dodge fate by simply laying low and ducking. The answer would come.

His revealed and preferred life had begun in the dorms where he had found the camaraderie and procrastinatory power of Magic the Gathering. He had won real money playing MTG in a Chicago regional. During that meetup he had taken his time and surprised none other than Quinn Kenney, one of the MTG superstar Kenney quintuplets.

This victory was the sign of what was to come. Quinn had been graciously mocking in defeat; after all, it was Quinn himself who described Daniel’s strategy as “laying low and ducking.” The phrase entered Daniel’s subconscious with more power and social certification than his entire baccalaureate. Further still, he had heard from Quinn about how Chewy Bucky and Rabid Williams and of course Quinn’s third brother Bryn went on to the riches in poker.

Answers gestated, interviews dodged, divorced parents worried.

Of course: the transition from normie world to gambling can and should be worrisome for all the usual moral and financial reasons. Daniel, though, was forearmed, and in ways most gamblers aren’t. With only the mildest duplicity he had retained his original college fund and kept his step-father’s reluctant gifts in the bank. You don’t have to buy all the books, you don’t have to go out on weekends, you don’t have to take a capitalized Spring Break on the Mexican coast, after all. MTG, video games, free pornography, and hybrid strains made for satisfactory staycations.

Dealing with poker players was a trip down college town lane, though. You never had to entirely grow up if you surrounded yourself with poker players. You were always on an app and always arguing over some minutiae.

Q: …so for all the reason I listed so intelligently in the paragraphs above, I checked.

D: I think this spot is close.

Q: Dude its not even a shave in the in Wiz. Betting loses .04 compared to checking

D: Ok

Daniel was not much of a chathead. He hated Discord, and he certainly couldn’t stand Quinn’s online personality. Few could.

It was 10:26 p.m. when Daniel put his phone down; its fading illumination satisfied. Aside from the chip issue, it had been a good day with a win at the tables. He had paid off a small but annoying debt to Quinn. He had been home in time to kiss Katrina good night as she disappeared into the latest episode of Euphoric and that sarcophagic blanket she dragged around the house like snail’s shell.

Daniel had built this comfortable life slowly. In his first six months online he had won, if not collected, more money than he expected to earn at McKinsey in two years. To make it happen, Daniel had rarely left his apartment, purchasing essentially nothing but the accordion that sat in his closet. He had taken all the worried calls, both from his mother and the very angry one from her new husband, with the patience of an ambitious saint. The staycations were now something else entirely. He broke out the accordion when his account balance blew past six figures.

Daniel had learned that when you know things are going to work out, politeness comes easy and manners go a long way. Or as he would later described on his podcast: “Becoming a poker professional was a simple choice, a calculation that had required no particular bravery.” Understated and precise.

Daniel had not only become hooked on his game of poker, he had soon discovered the even easier riches of its live games. The bonus of being paid out at a public cage, by accountable, institutional humans under cameras, was not lost on him. Within months he had travelled to L.A. to scout the it most famous casinos. When his lease in Bloomington was up, he moved to Gardena, California. He then won five figures each month for almost a year. When losing did come up, if a session went poorly, it was an excuse to study with PIO and sleep on it.

10:30 pm in that very Gardena. Daniel was flat on the bed, his hands in a tent on his chest, Katrina wrapped in her sarcophagus beside him. People argue over what the poker dream is. Daniel knew what it was because he was living it. He would let these memories and thoughts swim through his mind like fish and solve the problem that was bothering him by laying there quietly.

Quinn had ended up joining him, moving to nearby Bell Gardens; Daniel had gone from follower to leader. Everyone in MTG knew were the real money was now, and the complexities of their fantasy card game had prepared them. Now Daniel had a social life.

Yet it had only gotten better. Soon Daniel was on all the local streams; he had arrived just as the Hustler was blowing up the space and consolidating a vibrant poker audience. And when he lost his welcome on that stream – the balding host had been sniffing at Daniel’s VPIP and lack of outrageous t-shirts, – Daniel landed on both feet, becoming a commentator for the competing if less popular Endboss Live.

Daniel was no longer a nobody, no longer some Midwest Dan whose stepfather’s opinion mattered. He was Daniel Sandart, reg’s reg. The commentary gigs lead to a coaching contract for the Beat the Juice staking group. Above, all he had launched his most personal project, the soothing and thoughtful podcast dedicated to the poker life, Losing the Min.

Daniel shifted his weight and found Katerina’s topknot protruding from her cocoon. His private life would shine now, too. He met Katarina on an app. They were a natural match. She loved chess and performance and explaining theories of genius; he liked brunettes and small breasts. She didn’t want children; he had no bullying thoughts on the matter. Her attitude toward poker was itself amazing: she not only approved of his career but wanted to learn the game. Katrina had moved in with him three months after some dinner dates, strategy consults, and unplanned sleepovers.

Above all, Katrina understood him. Daniel was not much for arguing. He wanted resolution, not conflict. We have social needs, we meet them with fuss or with fire, Quinn had told him. Daniel didn’t know what Quinn was talking about: Daniel preferred no fuss or fire. Take today, just a few hours ago when he had made it to their apartment after the session:

Katrina: Daniel, you left toilet seat on up again.

DS: Ok.

Katrina: I lovfe you.

It had all been, well, simple. Daniel had never breathed too deeply or worked too hard; he had been excused from gym class so he could bring Malcolm High School to chess glory, after all. Now the most difficult thing he did was review hands – does an expert really even need GTOW? The ideas weren’t really that hard, not compared to understanding marginal price theory. And word traveled: the poker world knew Daniel was a strong player, to be respected: maybe no Phil Galfond but a winner and a pro. Daniel could handle this life, and he knew it.

It was just past 10:45 p.m. when Daniel decided that sleep was not coming easily. The master bedroom was small and the thin mattress set low. Light smudged on the white walls, but the midnight blue bed and blanket set was dark and milky. Perfect for sleep if you hadn’t misplaced a green chip. Katrina breathed with a small sniffle, like a little rabbit or a guinea pig. Katrina wouldn’t know or care anything about the chip, and she was asleep anyway. He feigned rising, then lay back into the bed without disturbing her. Katrina had wrapped herself with all the beddings available.

No matter. Daniel’s phone lit up brightly and wanted, with the usual barrage of notification need. His habit was social media first, of course, but this time he went straight back to the BTJ chat; he was contracted to provide answers when he could, after all, and more relevantly, might get to talk to James, an Endboss dealer who was working on his game.

D: Hey J, did anyone happen to turn in a green chip after your down?

J: Sorry no.

Q: Got some hands for you to pull apart and fry up, buddy.

Ugh. “Buddy” was code for this is important, asshole. Daniel turned back to his girlfriend and held her. Things are good with Katrina in his life. She was a deep sleeper, which Daniel hadn’t at all known he would find so reassuring.  Of course, it would help to know where that green chip was. It could be sleeping, too, under a chair or a napkin and about to be tossed into a dumpster.

It’s only a green chip, a quarter, he reminded himself. Daniel was not concerned with the dollar amount, not exactly. If it were a black chip, now that would represent one hour of his time. An hour would be gone. That could be upsetting. Fifteen minutes, on the other hand, never meant much. In fifteen minutes you can get started with the top of the hour news, use the toilet, leave the lid open, realize it is open, close it, and still catch the end of the headlines.

10:56 p.m. Still, to earn each dollar, you must risk certain dollars. Each hour represents time at the game, which means effort. It means stress. It means, in the end, accounting for all but the smallest amounts; Daniel was no different from any poker player in this regard. The closest he had ever come to physical violence with his fellow man was over a missed small blind controversy. That was five dollars; this is five times that amount.

Daniel had learned a lot about stress this past year. It was his first downswing in live poker. It was worse because losing had seemed almost impossible. At its worst, Katrina had given him the phone number of a head hunter. At its next worst, Dan had experimented with other games. At its latest worst, Dan had used money from the second savings account. Not the first one, the second one, which Katrina didn’t need to know about.

Yet one shouldn’t have to worry about a green chip, Dan chided himself. He was going to be fine, because he always was. He breathed and nodded off. He dreamed of the photo of a green chip. The photo slipped out of his wallet and down into a sewer. He slipped through the grating like cheese but instead found a wanted poster of a relative.

It was 11:58 p.m. when Daniel resurfaced from subconsciousness. The city was at its quietest already, which meant it was never really quiet. He heard yelling. Gardena was primarily Asian, but wait long enough and the other people, the loud people, spilled over with their midnight business. The rumble of a delivery truck, the cries of a party. The wheels of a homeless person’s grocery cart. The distant but shockingly loud street races. Occasionally, yes, the uneasy bark of what could be a diesel engine or some local gunfire. If I were Japanese, Daniel wondered, and was back from the internment camps, would I lay low and let things go like this? How do you know when the trouble is over? How long do you lay low?

Daniel sat in the dark which was never dark and a quiet which was never quiet. The downswing was likely over, however, and everything was good, yet the faint grey atmosphere of street lights and darkness and night fog around him spoke through its noise as a reminder of what variance in gambling really is: how do you know if it is over?

The camp at Beat the Juice had given answers. Quinn had turned out to be fascinated with statistics, too, and had put in some mathematical work. “If you lose enough, you’re probably not running bad at all. You need to reconsider what your win-rate really is.” Horrifying thought. The chip. The photo. Daniel groaned reflexively. I need to bury this problem deeper; I need to sleep.

Daniel, when the losing became more than a short-term swing, had also become obsessed with luck and statistics. Most players call luck variance, but he had unfortunately learned from Quinn that this was not really what variance was. It was a proper statistical concept which provided information on results dispersal. Variance, he concluded, was not really bad or good. This pleased Daniel. Nothing was dark or light, after all. A note from a reed instrument could be sublime or ugly.

Take today, well, yesterday now. He had faced a raise on king king seven. Strange flop for a raise, Dan pondered. Really, he wanted to tell the player. Would his opponent, a mopheaded kid, even raise value here? Maybe seven seven trying to stack a king? Some backdoors as a bluff?

Daniel didn’t buy it. Daniel had called down that raise, and the turn had gone check check. Just another hopeful stab, a random test of the pro by the mophead. Daniel collected the pot, which had been almost all green chips because broccoli brains had just rebought short and from the dealer. The pot was five hundred and thirty five dollars. There was no rake because he had played in a rare Endboss time game, the unprogressive privilege of those who can play big enough. He had collected, among the chips in the pot, ten greens, or two hundred and fifty dollars. So clear.

Or was it actually eleven chips? One of those exact chips, perhaps, was the one missing. He had started the hand with two stacks of whites, which was $4k, and with a whole stack of greens, or five hundred. He had two that he had left over from winning. That’s five hundred, plus fifty, plus the two fifty, which $800 and thus thirty-two in green.

Daniel had not tipped any greens, of course, that would be absurd. He had tipped a twenty-five at one of the other casinos, but it was a purple there and it was on stream. Quinn had been on him about not tipping enough. Money hadn’t even been tight then, yet tossing the purple chip at the long-haired dealer was one of his most degenerate memories. He had even confessed to Katrina about it.

Did he want that purple back? He could see Quinn Kenney laughing at him, goading him. Quinn who was famously broke all the time, all the regs new it, yet he was the one who ran the show, the one who lorded his circuit rings and that one damn bracelet over everyone. He had been hired at Beat the Juice first and probably helped in getting Daniel the contract job. Quinn tipped purples and greens for all Daniel knew, making it rain with all the complementary colors on the spectrum.

Maybe that’s why he was broke, Daniel thought, in spite of himself. Stupid and petty, he knew.

Daniel rolled his head around, trying to fool himself into fatigue. He couldn’t resist looking at the phone again. Its white light so slowly and pleasurably returned, a djinni summoned to tell him, yawning and chuckling, that it was 12:34 p.m.

Daniel pushed away any tip shame he felt. (Was he not a worker at the Endboss, too? Or did his job as commentator and sponsored podcaster mean he should tip more? Thoughts for another time, he insisted.) He had not colored up the greens today, either, he realized. He never did. Daniel didn’t like to call attention to himself, and the floor hadn’t offered. Not that the floor would offer anything or even be on the floor, necessarily, at Gardena’s worst cardroom.

Daniel searched his mind for all the possibilities. He hadn’t flipped for any greens, either. Of course not. Dropped one? Maybe it was as simple as that. Clearly, however, it should be in his pocket. When did he drop a one, never mind a quarter? Maybe when he cashed in he got it wrong.

His mind wandered. He opened the BTJ Discord.

J: Yo D did you talk to a floor? The cameras don’t work as well as you might think.

D: Ok

Daniel shifted from there to his bankroll app. He had notated that he had cashed in $3,967 at the cage, of which $3,865 had gone into his box. He had tipped the cage two dollars and kept four greens out to pay Quinn.

Daniel had taken out the greens and slapped them into Quinn’s hand. He was sure of it.

“One more. Nice try,” Quinn had lamely joked.

Dan had reddened instinctively when he looked at the open palm. Three greens lay there, like magic beans. It was three.

Dan didn’t make jokes like this. “Hang on,” he had told Quinn, who always made jokes like this.

Daniel had dug around in his pockets and his bag. He even went through his wallet, thinking one chip had squirmed into a wrinkle or a flap. Nope.

“Don’t be mad. Your GF is superhot. Modern life, no?”

“I live witih her. She’s like my… you know.” Daniel took twenty-five out in fives and ones and paid Quinn. Debt paid. Or overpaid. Which would explain the missing green.

“Wow. Look, knowledge is power.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

He thought about the bet, which he should not have taken. Why should he dig around in someone’s past? He knew there were things he regretted.

Daniel switched to texts.

D: Dude send me the photo.

Maybe he not only overpaid Quinn but maybe he had made a mistake. Had that really been her? Of course it wasn’t, what a scammer Quinn was, remember. Didn’t Bryn say he learned how to survive from Quinn? What did he mean by that?

Q: Still thinking about it huh

D: Forget it. I don’t want to see it.

Q: LOL just a sec

The photo lit up Daniel’s face; he was aware of Katrina again, buried in her blankets. Daniel closed the phone immediately, right as the hour turned to one. He had seen the smiling, sullen face and registered the familiar body. Why were heels so large, his mind wondered for him.

If Daniel got up, he might wake Katrina. And of course, the photo might not be her. What was Katrina’s eye color?

Fatigue had set in. The phone read 1:02 am.

The green chip must be there on the floor at the Endboss, or in Quinn’s pocket. It’s been an elaborate joke, a hoax. No, he had not given Quinn three greens, because he had left a certain amount in the box. Maybe that is it: the amount in the box was wrong, it had been, let’s see $3,840. Or which way was it – $3,890? Leaving three greens, plus the cash, to pay off Quinn?

Daniel closed his eyes.

Premonitions had saved her many times, Katrina noted. A thing could be a thing but also something much more important. Dreaming of home, wondering who was seated on the edge of the bed had to mean something. These are private thoughts, not suited to the book or the podcasts or her absolute favorite, the talks and lectures. Everything must be rational, she reminded herself. That’s her whole deal, it’s why they love her.

It was well past midnight and dark, it was just some nonsense that she had seen. What really happened, she argued against herself, is that she could feel Daniel relax and that’s why she knew his eyes were closed and that’s why she had seen the old life in her mind. He was not a worrier, and never really had problems. It was attractive but impossible. It used to be attractive, the hidden voice told her.

Hard to sleep after hearing that. So Katrina was not interested in going to bed so she made herself do it. She would fall into a state where she could hear the characters talking but also be dreaming herself. It was her new thing. It was not sudden, but a problem that had crept over her like a mood.

Maybe working only part-time was the problem, but she couldn’t fix that. She could pick up an extra assignment, she supposed. In the recent days when every dollar seemed to matter to Daniel, she had not asked too many questions. He was truthful, and that always was the difference. Of course, he was never exciting, but truthfulness and thoughtfulness counted. No one told the truth back home until they had you by your hair, screaming. When it was too late and nothing mattered. When all the eggs had cracked, the voice said. Colorful, who was that?

Money doesn’t matter, not really, not now, surely? When she sells the book, at last, she would conquer the field of poker in a way most players never would. She would be on every podcast and every shelf. Everyone would love her. Better, she now had a circuit ring, just like Daniel’s friend did. She had come so far in only two years.

So maybe money had been an issue once, yes, but now it was merely a way to keep score in a complicated world. Above all, she liked how everything was a game for Americans. Every day could be exciting. There was no nihilism here. Every day the heavens opened and memories went into a deep sleep.

Katrina used to wake up, worried about the rent. About Mikeal’s child. About her mother. But there was only one thing to wake up for now: where is your life going?

Everything had been so hard and simple, but now was so easy and so complicated. This was a life of trying not to eat too much rather than getting enough. Of smiling for other people because status was everything and being unhappy was absurd. Are you okay? How is your relationship? Are you unhappy? The Americans mocked you with their little girl voices. No one would shut up and just smoke with you.

It was almost one thirty. Daniel had rolled over to her. He would never hurt her; on the contrary she was not entirely sure who would win an arm-wrestling match between them. At school they had made the girls develop their muscles, too. Even future best selling authors and poker celebrities, even little green-eyed girls no one noticed.

The only variable that bothered Katrina sometimes, late at night, was hard to answer: why had she chosen a poker player? She had travelled across the ocean but not really left much behind. Am I becoming my mother?

Mikael’s gambling and drinking had been truly insane. The gendarmes had their building code memorized and she knew it was not because of the landlord’s singing. The fights were filthy and angry; she had made him clean up but usually that would start them all over. Daniel never fought over anything. She could wrap herself up like a mummy and sweat out her anger and he would just pat her on the head.

Which is why the missing money mattered. Katrina had to know if there was any Mikael in Daniel. Any at all. The thought of him coming home steeped in vodka and perfume and body salts made her wild. She had hit Daniel many times, even during their lovemaking, but he had never made her explain it. Every morning she saw him he would smile like the sun. It would be a relief too, but not in paradise. In paradise you want enemies to keep things interesting. She needed to find an enemy for Daniel, maybe one among his friends, maybe the interesting one. Katrina wanted everything to be complex, to dodge nothing.

Yet she worked out in the morning so she wouldn’t have to see that Daniel smile. Katrina did her job in the cafes. She fired off rewrites to the magazine, then met with poker coaches and interviewed athletes. She read everything she could find. She would overtake Daniel in his own field, swallow him, figure him out, chew him up.

You can do better, her mother would whisper in the old language, right there with Daniel in earshot of the phone. Katrina doubted that, though. A well-adjusted man, never mind a good looking American, is not something to just toss aside. To break up this relationship could trigger a domino effect, a catastrophe where she would have to go back home, work in some slimey deli if she was lucky and probably for Mikael again if she was not. Her agent would never call her; her book would be stolen and given to some other emigre bitch with high cheekbones. She couldn’t go through with that or any more weepy waiting rooms with all the other unhappy girls who couldn’t say no.

She knew what her enemies, the other women, saw. She saw the way her forehead was becoming bigger. Her cheeks had been red back home, but now her nose was; an unfortunate trade. Her eyes had seemed so dramatic when she looked in the mirror or took selfies, now they looked grey like smudges of smog and poison.

Katrina knew it was close to two in the morning. Daniel was sleeping, worried about nothing, of course. Part of what was infuriating is that he might really be good at the poker. He wasn’t much of a teacher and that’s why she had sought out his ridiculous friend to help her.

Poker was not like chess at all, no matter what they said. They make you play chess in school but poker was for sad rooms and wads of dirty money. She was no good at it but she saw its beauty and the potential. You lied in poker, you told stories, you wrote epitaphs. She knew she would write about games; she had just got the game wrong at first. Chess was elegant. Poker, however, is a giant mess. It was a desert thing, a western thing. It is a strip mall and not a castle. It was so confusing but so easy; there are no spaces in it, no lanes to follow. You have make all the choices but then suddenly no choices.

Katrina was suspicious of how much money Daniel brought in from poker, so she asked to play with him. It can only be, she told herself, that he is a lucky American. Katrina lost every time and Daniel won every time.

It made no sense. In the tournaments you always have some good runs. “Sometimes you are bug, sometimes you are windshield.” She liked Quinn’s colorful language; it made her nostalgic. She wasn’t sure he was good at poker either but he played in the tournaments and had won jewelry. He talked about math, which was reassuring. Daniel talked about strategy, which was ambiguous.

Yet in Daniel’s stupid cash games there was no winning for her or Quinn. It was suspicious.

So when the downswing started, everything made much more sense. This was the world she knew, this is when you stop sleeping. Daniel was a beautiful boy and just another lucky American. Born not with a silver spoon but with a natural knack of landing in the caviar and cream. They even went out for a true dinner one time. Kat pushed the salty cracker and the roe into his mouth, and Daniel only smiled politely. He should have slammed the table with his shot, the patrons should yell at you and with you. You need some bad times to understand, maybe.

Katrina was awake. She reached for Daniel’s phone and saw it: 2:25 a.m. She had friends back home. Everyone did. Here you have no friends. You do freelance work for a pittance but have a million channels to enjoy. Everything is a soporific. You can listen to Euphoric even at your desk at the cafe, then go home and watch it again until you really do fall asleep. If that fails, YouTube goes forever, it is an infinite set, a paradox. You can see yourself in the Ted Talk, explaining competition, and you can hear that applause like tinkling, sleepy waves. “The audiences are so easy here, they will clap for my worst performances, she had told Daniel. He just smiled. What does that mean? the voice asked.

You understand someone only in their most intimate, personal moment. She knew that, and so she knew him. Daniel never breathed too hard or tried too hard at anything. It was just in the water here, she originally decided. She had no comparisons anymore; she needed one, someone who made her laugh, who said clever things, who knew how to drink. What matters when nothing matters and nothing hurts? Well, she was no fool: It was the best drug of all, the sun and the ease. She had quit the hard stuff the week before she convinced Daniel they should live together. She applauded his efforts, she made it work. She guided his hand when they fucked.

Katrina had no competition, which was strange, really. Daniel did have friends, though, and this was what made Katrina insanely jealous, maybe all the more for the lack of a more normal jealousy. Above all, Quinn and his freakish friends at BTJ. Genociders all, of course, but it only maddened her to have come from the family that she did. No one ever quite talked about what they’d done during the war or the Holomodor. And of course Daniel was sweetly clueless about these things that mattered so much there but so little here, which was maddening itself. She had gone to the Japanese museum, at least, and nodded at the black and white travesties. At least she knew she could still be turned on.

Katrina pushed herself out of the blankets, suffocating and hot. It might be four already, fucking hell. She moved his arm back down to his waist. What always mattered here (and there) was money, by which she meant that money didn’t matter any more but it mattered all the more now. Money was secret, money had meaning and money had morality. Money was dreams. All she had ever worried about before was it running out, whether out of her father’s fingers or at Mikael’s casinos. Now that there was so much of it needed to be accounted for, organized, disciplined. She resented anything disorderly, but in money she was a pure taskmaster.

Daniel gambled, like all men, but somehow he won. So she needed to be certain he always won.

Katrina pressed the phone again. Thank god, only 3:45 a.m.

The downswing, as he called it, was the beginning of it. First off, this ridiculous American word, downswing, like some children’s gym toy. A toy for mongoloids and the mentally defunct. Daniel was losing. Losers end up in debt, they steal, they do kroc and someone has to shoot them, usually the police or the old thieves. Two sides of the same coin: Katrina could be bitter in her sleep, she knew. She saw things. She saw Daniel spread out along the edge of the bed like a purchase, like a prize.

What mattered was how Daniel handled it the “downsing.” He had to win. She would support him all she could. She was not really disloyal. But there had to be a point, and she knew the point: if he became a thief. Might as well see her mother and father in the cemetery again if he was a thief. You don’t cross the Atlantic only to find more crime. You came for the HBO, for seeing yourself on videos and in photographs and telling people how to be their best selves. Twelve dollars a month. Twelve dollars!

If Daniel ever stole from her, even the cost of a Home Box Office Theater month, it was over, she had decided. There would be no going back from that one thing.

Daniel shot up and breathed. Not only did he not know where the chip had gone, but a complication had formed even while he was sleeping off his twenty-five dollar problem. He had no cash for the breakfast burrito at Sanguina’s. Of course, what he meant was that he had only hundreds. Of course he had absolute piles of poker’s essential bill. The cantina would not take hundreds, nor did Daniel really want to break a single one. His money was in the box and the downswing might not be done and so every last hundred counted.

Cash was doubly important because it was Wednesday, the only day 10/20 ran. Daniel would need much of his remaining bankroll, even if most of it would not go into play. Bankrolls have a geometry to the stakes in play that is very important to a winning reg. Still, his choice was moderately funny because Eisenstein’s only took cards. The brave new world does not like greenbacks and society definitely hates hundreds the way poker loves them. It might not be a burrito Wednesday.

Katrina seemed to move. Would she get up and help solve this problem? He put out a hand on her hip again but the movement had ceased. She sleeps so much these days. He wondered if it was something medical.

He reached for his phone but it was not on the nightstand. The photo. He felt around the bed until he found the phone. It was 4:01 a.m.

It was the hour of answers. Daniel would go to Eisenstein’s. He would have to use his credit card, and then remember to pay the bill before the end of the month so there would be no interest on his bagel sandwich. That would be annoying. He would tell Quinn the photo was not of Katrina. He would let go of the green chip and live free. He wasn’t cheap, he would not become his step-father, ever.

He could, however, just borrow the money from Katrina. But she would be up at six and gone by seven. And he did not want to ask her for anything right at the moment, even if he had made a decision about the photo.

Daniel dodged the underlying question a little further. Why did he pay Quinn in chips, anyway? He could have given him a hundred-dollar bill before putting it into the box. Then he’d have small bills, protect his supply of hundreds, and satisfy the stupid prop bet. Which he never made but Quinn had a way of coaxing out of him.

Daniel leaned over to look at Katrina. She was a heavy sleeper. If he went into her purse for just a ten, he could still pay for the sandwich in cash.

Had he paid the debt in chips because he didn’t want cash involved? How does that even make sense? he wondered, but of course the answer was waiting for him already: chips make things less real. After all, it hadn’t been for a sports bet, it just felt like one. It was a bet on that. Jesus.

Chips let you lie low. Chips are nonconfrontational.

Daniel slipped out of the sheets. They zipped and vibrated: new cotton. He froze, then found the purse. Idiot, he whispered, as if to wake himself from a trance. There was only twelve dollars. He can’t take ten, she’ll notice. Instinctively, he took all twelve. It would make more sense.

It was 4:37 a.m. He held the twelve dollars, compelled by an indecision that he had not experienced in sometime. His stepfather’s hands were on his shoulder. I’ll just tell her. Kat snuffled and settled into the pillow. Dan breathed again.

He realized he couldn’t take the money. He couldn’t explain it. He had to put it back and return the purse to the dresser. He thought about what else he might find in the purse. Was he meant to look in?

Daniel waved it all away. This was all nothing, an imaginary problem, he decided. The green chip would just be in a pants pocket, and all of this would go away. And Katrina’s eyes were blue-green of course. The answers had arrived.

He opened the phone and looked at the photo of the blonde woman. Her eyes weren’t green but he couldn’t say what they were. He could look later, not now. The time was 4:46 am. He would go to sleep now. He would not make any more bets with Quinn. Stupid. Look what it leads to. Rushing, foolishness.

4:50 a.m. I’ll just wait until she’s up. I’ll open the closet door and I will know right away. Two hours ten minutes, he contemplated.

No, he couldn’t wait. She can deal with it. He forced the closet open, then turned and flourished, expecting her to be up and annoyed at the squeaking roller. But the lump of blankets only shifted.

His pants were folded over a dry-cleaning wire hanger. Daniel immediately grasped the implication and got down on his knees, seeking out where the chip had fallen. Caught a hanger, Sarge, he readied, already laughing at his wit.

All he found, however, was the accordion box. Unopened for years now, it had graduated to one of his most prized possessions because of its age. He venerated the green vinyl, although he could not see it in the late-night darkness. Opening the squeaky closet was not enough. He longed to take out the instrument and lets bellows breathe before delivering a mighty wind.

I’m going crazy, Daniel thought. I must need a little more sleep.

In the late-morning splendor of the jobless, Daniel awoke. Katrina was gone, of course, yet the bed was already warm from the sun, and completely denuded of sheets, blankets or any of Katrina’s swaddlings. Noise from the street permeated their apartment; she had opened a window for him.

Daniel leapt up with purpose. There had been no green chip in his clothes, and it wasn’t there now. He found his phone on the kitchen table.

Q: buddy, let’s have breakfast we need to talk. Bagels?

D: Ok

Q: it’s hands, man. You’re not keeping to your quota. The clients want to hear from you. Everyone loves you, you know.

Well fuck, Daniel thought, relief flooding through his body.

Strange, though, to find the twelve dollars in his pajama pocket. Hadn’t he returned them? The bills were wrinkled badly. Daniel skipped his breakfast burrito. He would explain the twelve dollars to Katrina, which he wouldn’t even use. Stupid, he thought, but a good story and very much something I would do. Quinn would of course expense breakfast on the BTJ card.

There was always an answer. The green chip was behind him, and likely the downswing and that other thing, too.