“I may stay here,” I said.
“I’ll come to the point. Some of our Chinese executives are very superstitious. One of them was watching your surveillance videos last night and she swore she saw a figure standing behind you. She swore she saw it, and many of our colleagues believe it. They say that your nine nines cannot be a fluke or a piece of luck. Think of us as superstitious if you like. It’s the way it is. My bosses are asking me to ask you not to play again at the casino. It is not even that they are afraid of incurring further losses. They are afraid of the spirit world and they say, pardon me, that you have a ghost attached to you.”
“I’d like to see that video.”
“There’s nothing on it. My boss, I should add, is a very superstitious woman. Her name is Helen. She offered me a rather odd proposition. She said you could play one more hand in this casino. I thought it was an original idea. One hand. You can play it any time you want. Night or day. And then, if you win, you have to leave the Lisboa tables for good. If you lose, we’ll rethink. It will prove the ghost is no longer there.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“You have to be kidding me, Souza.”
“No, all too serious. If you are harboring a ghost, we cannot have you in the casinos. That is her position. Morale among our employees would collapse. It is unthinkable.”
“Harboring?”
“I don’t know what other word to use. We are not saying it is your fault. Something may have happened — you may have attracted some presence that you are not aware of. It has been known to happen.”
“You are telling me a ghost story.”
He opened his hands and smiled. You know how we are.
I sat very still for a while and digested this change in my situation. I listened attentively to the shuddering hum of the air-conditioning unit, the muted clank of cranes and cement mixers and the sibilance of the computer itself, where my image was no doubt frozen by the pause button. Sounds from a parallel world that did not have my interests at heart. He was not going to tell me what he had really seen on that screen, or what his female colleague had seen, and so from now on we were just wasting time. I wanted to be gone, and yet I wanted to know what the casino would do if I actually won that last hand they had permitted me. I asked.
“You keep it, of course. You keep everything.”
From his tone it was suggested that he didn’t believe this would happen.
“All of it?”
“It’s a casino — of course you keep it. We have a reputation to uphold. We aim to create a true experience for the customer, remember. It’s like a journey, a voyage. We’ve built everything around that concept of an experience. So your own journey will come to a satisfying end, no? We want you to have a beautiful experience.”
“You do?”
“Don’t look so skeptical.”
But I changed the subject.
“Mr. Souza, do you yourself think that I am haunted?”
He steadied himself and blinked, because now he had to tell the truth. He said that was exactly what he thought, though “haunted” was not the word he would have used. Blessed? At the door, he shook my hand, using that curious mixture of Cantonese and English that people here often break into.
“Gum lei take care la.”
Darkness and gold, and the sound of water from afar: the ghosts alive and drinking, tortured by their thirst just like me. I drank heavily in my room. Vodka and cranberry, and gin with lemon twists. I didn’t notice the days and nights and the interludes in between where nothing happened. The distant clatter of the casinos, that white noise of the Lisboa, had almost passed out of consciousness altogether. There was a hush to the heavily carpeted corridors, where the staff passed on leather soles with their trays balanced on one hand. The smell of passing waffles and dim sum and bok choy cooked in sauce. The smell of eggs and toast and the clock clock of knuckles rapping on doors where men lay half unconscious on their beds in their long black socks waiting for change. I had not had the itch for baccarat for some time. Mr. Souza was correct when he pointed out that worried money never wins.
EIGHTEEN
Two nights later I put on my gloves and placed the totality of my winnings in the Adidas bag. I wore a tuxedo with a white carnation and, in a touch of sad panache, a pair of two-tone shoes. Greased down, pomaded, brushed, and polished, I looked like a cartoon as I left the room with a quiet click and heaved my bag into a gold-plated elevator filled with smoking trolls. The mirror made me think of those incomparable words of Joseph Roth commenting upon a picture someone had done of him: Yeah, that’s me all right, nasty, drunk but clever. I adjusted the buttonhole and listened to the fools dissing me in their dialects, thinking I didn’t understand. And so to the Fortuna VIP room, temple of my baccaratic fate.
I was stopped at the doors by two managers who had clearly been told to look out for me. They were all toothpaste-ad smiles and handshakes, smooth as razor wire and metal to the core.
“Lord Doyle, how nice to see you! Is that a bag full of money?”
“It is indeed,” I replied, swinging it with dash. “I had a whim,” I said. “I’ve been away from the tables far too long, and it’s time I played a hand or two. You know how it is.”
“We’re glad to hear it, Lord Doyle. One minute, please.”
One of them spoke into a walkie-talkie.
“Would you like a private room?” the other one then said, as they let me in, walking on either side of me. “We can arrange it.”
“Not necessary. I like a crowd.”
But we don’t, they implied.
“Very well,” they said. “We understand that it adds to the enjoyment of the game.”
“I like to show off, I guess. I’m an old-fashioned exhibitionist. Especially when I lose. Imagine that.”
“We have many high rollers like that, Lord Doyle.”
“Do you? I wouldn’t call myself a high roller exactly. I’m more like a low roller. A low rolling stone covered with moss and pigeon shit.”
They tried to laugh at a joke they didn’t get. I noticed they wore the same cuff links that Mr. Souza wore: black dice.
“Should we count the money? Most of our high-rolling clients insist on it.”
“Sure, count it if you feel like it. Mind if I have a cigar?”
They pulled out a huge Havana before I could make a move. It was clipped and lit in a jiffy.
“Thank you very much. I’ll sit here while you count.”
They went into an adjoining room and returned in ten minutes. A slip of paper was handed to me with the exact sum written on it.
“Satisfactory,” I said. “It’s the same total I came to myself.”
“Naturally it is.”
They bowed.
A waitress in a long, slitted cocktail dress appeared, her face heavily made up. She asked me in Chinese if I’d like a complimentary glass of champagne before I sat at the table.
“Very kind of you. I’ll drink it here.”
I sat on the heavy Louis XV armchair and sank back into its satin upholstery. The minders bowed again and said that when I had selected my table they would bring the chips to it.
“Fine. But I have one question. I know you have a minimum bet of ten thousand here. What if I bet two million? You know that I am permitted only one hand.”
“We are aware of that, Lord Doyle.”
“Then I need to know if there is a maximum bet.”
This seemed not to have occurred to them.
“I am not sure,” one of them muttered. “I will call Mr. Souza.”