Saturday Night
Tonight will be a good night.
I hand over my ID to the bouncer at the jazz bar I frequently go to most Saturday nights. He looks me up and down and then at my fake ID. It’s never the same guy and it always annoys me. I’m a regular here but I’ve never seen the same bouncer more than twice. It’ll be cool if my ID wouldn’t be closely looked at too. For the first time, I’m rejected.
“What the fuck? I come here all the time,” I complain.
“Don’t care. This is a fake.”
“The fuck it is! Do you know who you’re dealing with? I’ll double-check with Manny if I were you before I get Omar involved. Wouldn’t want to get fired.”
The mention of Omar’s name worries the bouncer. “Hey Manny, I got a Grace Theorsma here. Her ID is fake,” the bouncer radio’s in.
I hate raising my voice in anger. The bouncer is just doing his job, but tonight is an important night and I’m already stressed as it is. Nothing has gone my way the entire day and now this. I only hope that my birthday tomorrow will be better.
“We cover eye insurance if you need to get them checked. She’s good, let her in,” Manny blips on the walkie-talkie.
The bouncer moves to the side, letting me in. “Memorize this pretty face,” I scoff, walking past him. My anxiety has taken over and I couldn’t stop it. I don’t like it, but I can’t help it considering what’s at stake.
The jazz club is livelier than usual as the band playing the live show is well known. Normally I would stop at the bar and say hi to my bartender friend and spend an hour enjoying the live music, but I’m in a hurry. Aylin was unable to leave work as scheduled, making me late to everything else I had to go before coming here.
The main floor is occupied with people genuinely interested in the music or are pretending to and are pretentious, there’s no inbetween. Either way, it’s not uncommon for someone to try and approach me at the bar. Whether I continue the conversation depends if they tip my friend when they buy me a drink. It’s either older men or tech bros who make up the bulk. I don’t let it progress further once the night ends. I don't come here to get hit on or to enjoy the music. It's the basement that I’m interested in, and I’m late as it is.
From the entrance and past the bar, I turn into the hallway that leads to the bathrooms and another door at the end. It’s this door that leads to the employee area. A bit past a few corridor turns, there’s a stairwell leading underground to my destination which is guarded by Manny. His jolly eyes shine brighter at his sight of me. Manny is allergic to frowning.
“I’m getting sick of a new bouncer every week,” I match his infectious smile.
Manny moves out of the way to let me through, “It’s out of my hands, sorry, Gracie.”
“I didn’t see you last week. How’s the weight loss going?”
“I never thought a small change to diet soda instead of regular would make such a difference. I’ve lost five pounds since you told me. My knees haven’t ached since you told me to switch from walking on the treadmill to the pool, either. It’s way better than the advice Omar gave me”
“That's so great to hear! When you start to stall again, try switching to lower-calorie snacks after. They won’t taste as good, but it’s better than cutting them out completely.”
Manny gives me his little jolly round laughter. “I’ll keep that in mind, but don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“I’m not too late, am I?”
“You never are.”
“Good.”
“Good luck in there.”
I descend the stairway and open the door with the no-entry sign.
The massive basement is on another level compared to the main floor. Like above, it’s another club bar but the ambience is different. It is lightly filled with cigar smoke but no band is playing tonight. All the tables are empty except for a few and their attention is on one that they surround in the middle. This table is the only one everyone’s here for and one with a seat ready for me. I’m the last one to arrive and all eyes are on me. I take that seat and place my handbag on my lap. I’ve never seen the room be so empty before, but it makes sense that it is given for tonight's event.
“Took you long enough,” one of my competitors next to me snarkily says. I ignore her because I know she’s just trying to antagonize me. She always tries.
Omar, the owner of the building, walks up to the table and welcomes me in. The well dressed and built black man places my chips in front of me. “Are we all ready to begin?”
“Yeah,” I say after everyone else agrees.
The round table is the largest in the room, with enough room for bottles, cups and playing cards to be spaced around. There has to be as I know how messy the table can get. One of my opponents cuts a few lines of cocaine on a plate on his side, intending to share with us. I take this time to adjust my clothes and get myself comfortable in the seat.
“I like your dress,” the girl next to me says but I don’t hear any passive aggressiveness from her this time. “And your heels, where’d you get them?”
Formal attire isn’t required but I thought tonight is special and it’ll fit the mood. Luckily I wasn’t alone in thinking that.
I’m wearing a thin white silk dress for the occasion. Any gust of wind would give someone a show. This is the only place I dare to wear it because everyone here wouldn’t care. My nipples are protruding out and it’s quite noticeable. The dress itself is the most expensive out of the three I own. It’s price pales in comparison to my white and gold Dolce & Gabbana heels. It’s the most expensive thing I own and it took months to save money to buy them. I answer the woman on my left with dark tanned skin and a black two-piece dress. She hates my guts because I showed up out of nowhere last year and stole her spotlight, or at least I think that’s why.
On my right is a Polish man with dyed red hair wearing a red leather jacket over a white collared shirt. Across me, is a man in his 60s wearing a suit with sunglasses on and smoking a cigar contributing to the smoke covering the area.
These are the three I’m up against tonight.
Omar places the deck of cards in the center while someone else from the staff hands me a glass of wine. The man in the suit rests his cigar on the ashtray and then picks up the deck to start the game.
This private club under the jazz bar is where those in it come to relieve their stress. Unlike upstairs, it’s members only and the only money used is for gambling or buying and selling drugs. The bar is open and free. The stage is usually in use by a band or fitted for exotic dancers. Members smoke their lungs away. They escape their daily life with drugs. They gamble their money away. There’s only one rule here: No business. This room is the underground, away from the masks of the daylight. It hides the complexity and stress of life. It’s relaxing. It’s a thing to do. There’s none of that tonight. Tonight it’s empty because of the tournament.
Tonight is poker night. It’s the grand finals.
An all or nothing game where only the last four winners from four separate brackets from previous nights face each other.
I somehow ended up winning my spot last week. I’m still unsure how because I never thought I would make it this far. I joined just to learn.
The games played in this room are illegal, of course. The most popular is poker and this is my first tournament. Other games are played, many of which I’m not familiar with, but I usually come here for blackjack and don’t pay attention to any other. Blackjack is by far the easiest to play and win at. I’m the best at it.
If I played blackjack at my full potential, I would have been kicked out by now. I hold back enough to where nobody can know just how much I’m able to control the game and only win when I want to. Counting cards is easy. It’s easier when you've been a math prodigy your entire life and have an excellent memory. I’m sure Vegas has ways to make counting cards harder, but not here. The games here are casual and have good rules. Once I watch and play enough, the game always becomes under my control and I win more than I lose. I play to keep my mind sharp and see if my predictions come true and care little if I lose. They say the house has an edge of 52% against someone who knows what they’re doing. At my best, it’s around 40% with me.
Which is why I don’t like poker as much. I’m still learning and there’s much more to keep track of. There’s an exceptional amount of more randomness and external variables involved that decreases the odds of me winning as much as I want to. But that doesn’t make it impossible to find the probabilities of a winning hand. Hand equity is key. Knowing when the call, raise, or fold always comes right away with the first hand and calculating the equity. The rest is finding the probability of getting the best hand compared to everyone else. It’s all about the risk after that.
Luck.
And unlike blackjack, the biggest variable is the human one. This unknown is by far the hardest to figure out and makes the game stressful with all everything else I have to do in a short amount of time. I’m usually good at reading people but it’s hard to with these games. It’s only been getting harder the better opponents I face.
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Poker is serious.
Usually.
But that’s not how we play poker.
Not here.
There are drinks at the table. Loyd, the old man, is smoking a cigar and drinks whiskey like it’s water. Jayce, the redhead is cracking jokes and lining up a line of cocaine on the side. Tristen, the only other woman, is the most serious one and is having a beer and a cigarette. I pour myself another glass of wine and I lit up a cigarette with her help too. No game goes without lightheartedness to mask the intensity.
On my very first hand, I get a pair of aces. Right away I have very high equity. I’m safe to raise. It doesn’t matter what my opponents have. That part doesn’t matter right now. What matters is what they do and how they react. They say the key to winning poker is having an excellent poker face. The key is to be able to read if someone’s bluffing or not, and I’m excellent at reading people. These people, my competition, makes me believe otherwise.
The flop reveals the first three cards and I’m in an even better position. There are another two aces, which means I automatically have four-of-a-kind. Then there’s a king but that card doesn’t matter. The likelihood of me losing is slim. No, it’s nearly impossible. The only thing that could be is a royal flush and with the turn showing a useless 3, I have the nuts. The next step is to try to make the pot as big as possible.
I win the first round.
“You like my new glasses?” Jayce jokes with two chips in his eyes and flips me off.
“Wow! Please tell me where you got them, I must own a pair!” I entertain him but I’m very obviously sarcastic. It’s all part of the fun.
“Will you shut up and just fold already?” Loyd chuckles with his deep smoker’s voice.
“There are better ways to spend your retirement money. I raise,” I toss my chips in.
“Don’t be scared to risk more, hunny. You won’t bust right away,” Tristen blows her smoke on my face.
“Ain't this your first rodeo, Grace? The first is always the most stressful” Loyd laughs. “Especially if your not playing with daddy’s money.”
“Could have fooled me,” Tristen chuckles. “No one shows up and gambles as quickly as you did, unless the money wasn’t yours.”
Loyd is right. I didn’t buy in with daddy’s money’. I’m playing with the money I earned from blackjack won by my skill. It’s the money that my mother doesn’t know about. It’s the money no one knows I have.
I’m a fish out of water in this exclusive club. Everyone here comes from money or has some sort of connection. I joined having none of that. To the three players left, the money on the table is but a write-off. Gambling is just a hobby. I also play the part. I play pretend that I’m just like them. I’m not Grace Ciotta here, which is why I like it. No one knows I’m underage and don’t belong here. No one has cared to find out.
“Aw shit, fuck it, I’m game,” Jayce tosses his chips in then mentions his head at me to the plate next his chips. “Want a line, Grace?”
I nod and sniff one of the many lines on that plate. “I’ll fold,” I make my call after everyone else does. My hands haven’t been the best since my first win and I’ve been playing it safe. I’ve been cruising by but now that I’m in the home stretch, the stress has been getting to me. Of course, I don’t show it. I don’t think I do. I’m sure I have tells. I just don’t know what they are yet. I don’t have the privilege to play against myself.
The game only gets more chaotic the further we go. The table becomes a mess of chips scattered everywhere. Parts of it are covered in puddles of alcohol. Smoke casts a cloud of fog around us. The small crowd around us watching only gets drunker and louder and makes the game harder to concentrate on. The few glasses of wine and beers I had aren’t helping either.
But as the game progresses, so do my winning hands. The game is so unserious that no one has noticed I’ve gotten used to everyone. I have gotten used to the subtle tells they give me. It only took until the final moments to get there. I use it as a good learning opportunity to use later. There’s still more for me to know on how to read people.
In the end, it comes down to me versus Loyd. Jayce doesn’t care that he lost and is more focused on getting wasted. Tristen hates that she lost but sticks around to see me lose. The stress has made me have more wine and more lines to help me calm down. The bitter smoke remnants of the cigarettes I smoked made my mouth taste gross. We have been at this for hours and I’m ready to finish whether I win or lose. I bought my slot in the tournament expecting to not get very far. I can feel the sweat stick my dress to my back.
“How old did you say you are, Grace?” Loyd asks after he makes his bet. We’re down to the final few hands.
“Twenty-Three. I call,” I say.
“Hmph, I have a grandson three years younger,” He flips the next card on the river.
“Are you trying to set him up?”
“God no. He’s too spoiled for his own good.”
“Bummer,” I exhale cigarette smoke. “You got my hopes up.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint,” Loyd laughs, exposing the river. “Sorry that you lost this hand too.”
“That’s alright, you caught my bluff,” I giggle, accepting my loss. I’m able to breathe knowing I tried my best and it’ll be over soon.
“That’s my first one of the night. You’re hard to read, Gracie.”
“I know,” I smirk.
Loyd tosses me my cards for the next round and says, “Let’s make this interesting. All in.”
“Are you serious?”
He doesn’t have to but Loyd pushes all of his chips before laying down the flop. Screw it, I came knowing I’ll lose. I push all my chips too. The furrowed look on Loyd tells me he doesn’t care if he wins or loses. He probably got tired of playing and wanted to end the game just like I am. I don’t think I’ll participate in another tournament again. This sucks. Winning a couple hundred in blackjack once in a while is enough for me
My hand isn’t great. Loyd’s hand is worse. I win anticlimactically with just a pair. It takes me a moment to process that. I entered the tournament with no expectations. Now I’m walking away with 50 grand.
I don’t even know what to do with so much money.
I want to jump and scream in excitement, but I don’t. I’m glued to my seat. I thought I would feel happier. It just feels empty.
“Why did you go all in there?” I ask Loyd.
“It’s more fun to let luck decide who wins.”
Mom isn’t home when I get back at 3 in the morning as usual. She’s doing another 12-hour shift at the hospital where she works.
Sara’s room door is open when I pass by. She’s peacefully asleep despite the lights being left on. I flick the switch before heading inside my room. I shut the door behind and rested against it for a moment.
She’d be so disappointed with everything I’m doing. Like my mom, she has full trust in me. Their idea that I know better is a lie I’m constantly telling. I take a deep breath.
I keep all of my money hidden in a cookie box up on a shelf high in my closet. It gets full whenever I get close to saving one thousand. The 50k I won doesn’t fit. For now, I hide it away inside my school backpack.
The amount still doesn’t feel real. Even in my hands it feels like it’s not mine. I feel more proud in the nights when I walk away with little over a hundred than I do now. I don’t understand why I don’t. I even had to fake my enthusiasm while sticking around the club to celebrate.
50k is just too much.
Anyone else would go crazy from winning so much.
I’m just mildly relieved that it’s over.
I wouldn’t even begin to know how to explain how I have so much money. I'd like to give it to my mom so she isn’t tight on money anymore, but I can’t without her asking any questions. With whatever I do win on blackjack, I spend it on clothes, tickets, and drugs so it goes unnoticed. If she ever questions the new clothes she sees me wear, I have the excuse of using the money I earn from babysitting.
I have to keep this a secret no matter how much I don’t want to.
I don’t want to keep secrets, but they’re the only way I can break away from the projection of me. It makes me, me, and not who I’m always compared with.
But Elizabeth also had secrets.
The night of her death flashes my sight again. The smoke, the rain, the voices approaching, and what’s below me come back like I’m living it again.
Elizabeth died in front of me and I became who I am now in order for everyone to forget about that.
I change out of my dress, tossing into the closet, and put on a more comfortable t-shirt and gym shorts. In the bathroom, I tie up my hair into a bun and remove my make-up. For once, I look in the vanity mirror and see the Grace I always wanted to see, even if it was just for a second.
I turned 18 tonight.
I’m beautiful.
I worked so hard to be.
Back in my room, I lay in my bed but realize I’m nowhere close to being tired. My nose is clogged and my jaw is still a bit locked. I try to read some Sylvia Path or Anne Sexton but I can’t concentrate. Something’s gnawing in my stomach and it’s beginning to hurt.
I could take a quarter of a Xanax pill and fall asleep, but I’m not ready for the morning just yet. Something’s been wrong lately. I haven’t been feeling myself. I have to figure this out before I can fall asleep.
I get up, go to my desk, and turn on my PC. The desktop is littered with documents and essays that camouflage the icons of the games I used to play. It’s been so long that I haven’t bought a new game in over a year. Then again, there’s only one that I used to play consistently but I haven’t touched it in six months.
League of Legends.
How many people know that I like to play video games?
I double-click on the game’s icon and boot up the game I used to play every night. It was the last to go of my old childish hobbies. All of my online friends are off except one of the two I know IRL. I guess it’s Yuna at this time. We haven’t played together since I stopped six months ago. I shoot her a DM asking if she wants to play and then I wait for her game to finish. Meanwhile, I check out everything new to the game.
Three new characters have been released since I last played and I watch videos on what they do. I also read all the changes made to the ones I play to see if they’re still any good.
Matches take anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes on average. Yuna crosses into the 40s once I’m caught up with all the patch notes. I’d ask her to get on a call with me on Discord but she doesn’t like distractions during a ranked competitive match. I send her an in-game message asking how much longer she’ll take. She replies that it’s looking like a 50 to an hour game.
Having nothing else to do and nowhere close to being tired enough to fall asleep, I pull a small baggie out under all the junk inside my desk drawer. I should be more careful where I keep my drugs now that Sara’s home. Carelessness is how I got caught the first time. I can’t crush Sara’s heart like that.
I’m a fraud. I’m not even who I believe I am. I don’t have the pure intentions as I lead on.
Is this what’s been gnawing at me?
I pour the white powder into a clump on my desk and divide it into two equally thick and long lines with my now useless school ID. I pick up a rolled up dollar bill in front of my monitor. I stare at the two lines for a moment.
I just won 50,000 dollars. I should celebrate harder.
I get up to grab my purse off my bed. I dig through it and take everything out so I don’t struggle to find the folded-up dollar bill inside all the mess. I lick my finger and dip to scoop up a larger amount that I’m used to, and wash it down with an old water bottle on my nightstand.
Molly: pure MDMA, my favorite.
I sit back down and snort the two lines consecutively. The rush almost immediately shoots my mind to be as focused and clear as it can be. Once that high ends in 45 minutes to an hour, the molly will kick in and it’ll make me feel all better again. It’ll take away all of the weirdly anxious and uncomfortable lack of excitement.
There isn’t anything better than this combination.
I clean whatever didn’t end up inside my nose with my finger and rub it on my gums, numbing my mouth a bit. As I do, I notice the other person on my friend list I know in real life login, Felix.
I send out an invite for him to join my lobby.
He joins, then sends me a message.
It’s been a while
Happy birthday ^_^
how have you been Gracie?