Cards and Humanity
by Toni Livakovic
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 3
Several hands later, Pete loses the rest of his chips as well. His opponents had squeezed a large sum of money out of him after he continued to frequently and generously call their bets.
“Well, that’s it for me, gang. I’ll hang around, but I played it how I wanted to play it, so I’m not going to buy back in,” Pete declares. He boasts a rich, euphonious voice and an enduringly fit body of tall stature, byproducts of his recent all-state choir and lifeguarding days in high school.
“Why not?” Hayden prods mischievously. “We’ll be here for a good while, you can still make your money back.”
Pete shakes his head. “I don’t really care about making the money back for myself. I actually get the most pleasure from seeing you all win, you know?”
“You serious?” Hayden grills. “If someone else wins money, sure, that’s good for them. You don’t get to feel or experience that yourself, though. There’s nothin’ wrong with trying to win for yourself, when that’s what feels the most real to you.”
“Don’t you think it’s the right thing to do to help someone build a good amount of chips for themselves? Especially if they’ve been playing well but got handed bad cards.”
“I think it’s a nice thing to do, Pete. I don’t think it’s the ’right’ thing to do. Everybody at this table chose their own moves and got random cards just like I did. It’s not my responsibility to make up for either of those things going wrong.”
“Our sets of cards both might’ve been random,” Derrick interjects, “but yours were sure different than mine.”
“Yup,” Pete confirms. “It’s easy for you to say what you said, Hayden. I saw how many good hands you got and how many chips you blew through. You clearly have the money to buy yourself back in after your recklessness, and you won’t support someone who needs it more.”
“Again, it’s not my responsibility! For real, do I gotta pick up the slack for everybody who’s got a bad poker night?”
“I’m not saying you’re supposed to be the solution for everyone. I’m saying you’re supposed to play your part for the greater good of other people when the cost isn’t much to you.”
“Alright,” Hayden smiles snidely. “Do it yourself then. I’m sure you got some cash in your wallet, make somebody a handsome little donation.”
Frozen in his chair, Pete dodges the intrigued stares of the men at the table. He stuffs his hand into his pocket to silence his buzzing phone, most likely the weekly text message his younger brother sends to detail the progress of his therapy.
“Uhh...I mean, I really worked hard this week, I mean, most of my cash is tips from—”
Hayden lifts his hand to cut Pete off. “Listen, I’m not trying to say you’re purposely a hypocrite. But I’m sick of hearing people say that they play poker to help others win or because they like seeing others win. You might not be ticked off about your chips going to us, but every move you made was to build up your own stack.”
“You’re wrong,” Pete proclaims defiantly. He immediately begins to hesitate with his next words. “I didn’t want to tell you guys this, but throughout the game, I thought about who had fewer chips or faced bad luck, and I would sneak some of my chips into your stacks.”
“Hats off to you for doing a good thing,” Marcus compliments.
“Hold up there, pal,” Hayden demands. “Pete, even if you did that, you didn’t share the extra cash in your wallet. If your entire reason for playing poker is really about looking out for other players, you would’ve gone the full mile.”
Pete scratches his full head of hair and fidgets with his foot. “Fine. I’m not perfect. With that being said, my goal is more than just having a good time, racking up wins, and leaving. There must be something more, some sort of genuine fulfillment. And I honestly think there’s real pleasure in seeing someone with fewer chips build their way up, especially if you helped that happen.”
“That’s really cute,” Niall mocks, seemingly carefree about almost choking on his beer as he laughs.
Hayden challenges, “Listen to what you said, though. ’There’s real pleasure.’ That’s the problem. It doesn’t matter if you try to get more chips for yourself or for somebody else. They both got the same selfish end goal of making yourself feel good.”
“You think I do it to make myself feel good?” Pete bellows before regaining his composure. “Sure, it’s a nice little perk, but it’s not the purpose. The fulfillment I get myself isn’t bigger than the value of the chips I sacrifice for others.”
“It has to be, even if you don’t realize it. The only thing that’s real and understandable to your game, big guy, is what you feel, not what anybody else feels. So be my guest: go ahead and help out the other guys, but it’s because it makes you feel good.”
Sidney shakes his head. “There is not a difference between your feelings and the feelings of somebody else. We are all part of the same interconnected poker game.”
“That’s right, you can’t stay narrow-minded like that, Hayden,” Pete validates. “Even if I do benefit from helping other players, I don’t think that matters. They still get the same results from the chips I’m slipping them.”
“Course it matters. It’s all about intention, not results. It doesn’t make you a good person if helping yourself is the goal, and whoopty-doo, helping others is conveniently the side effect.”
“It still would make you a good person.” Pete’s clear diction starts to stumble into an unconfident stutter. “You said that the things that matter are the ones that are real and tangible to us. Well, the chips that other players get from my help are real. The reasoning doesn’t affect anyone, so it doesn’t matter.”
Hayden leans back in his chair and starts to puff at his cigar. “You can keep telling yourself whatever you want to hear.”
Pete clenches his fists and his face begins to flush. “You know, you talk a lot of trash about my integrity for a guy whose only goal here is to make a ton of money.”
Setting the comment aside, Hayden bets a sizable chunk of chips. JP, who is the only other one still in the hand, matches the bet, falsely thinking it is a bluff.
As Hayden finishes scooping his winnings, he turns back to Pete. “Youse have all been reading me wrong this whole time. Poker is about having the most enjoyable experience you can. Making cash, enjoying the game, winning for the sake of winning: they’re all part of that. I’m sick and tired of being seen as the bad guy for playing that way, when all of youse listening are probably the same as me deep down.”
“Not any of the things that you said are going to bring you the happiness you think they will. You are leading yourself down a path with no reachable destination,” Sidney advises.
“Yeah,” Pete agrees. “Anyway, don’t you think it’s selfish to shoot for the best poker night for yourself if other people are losing out from it?”
“No, it’s 100% natural. The whole point of poker is to make the most for yourself. It doesn’t make any sense to try and change the fundamental roots of the game. That’s like pushing a boulder up a hill over and over again, when it’ll keep falling right back down.”
“That’s only because we as players decide to play that way. We don’t have to play in a self-maximizing way just because most people do.”
“Pete, there’s a reason why everybody plays for themselves. It’s—”
“Not everybody,” Pete interrupts.
Hayden continues his original thought. “It’s not because we purposely choose to or because we got some sorta pressure to follow everybody else. It’s because that’s the way poker is naturally made for us to play.”
Pete grumbles. “If that’s the case, then maybe there’s something seriously wrong with this game.”
The lightbulb begins to flicker at a steady rate every three seconds or so.
Hayden glares directly at it. “Guys, it’s doing that thing again.”
In his head, he begins to time each persisting flash. Every three seconds...no, is it every two seconds now? His heart begins to wrestle its way out of his chest at the realization.
“Guys,” he repeats to no avail. “Guys! Jesus Christ, is anybody freakin’ listening to me?” he screams, slamming both of his hands against the table and rattling the nearby chips and cards.
Every single head at the table turns to Hayden in complete unison, and they then follow his gaze upwards as Hayden’s anger molds into fear.
“This is nothing new,” Marcus contends after a few seconds of scratching his beard. “I’ve always said it’s a frail light. That should be obvious to anyone.”
“You don’t get it, Marcus,” Hayden snaps. “It’s happening soon.”
All the men dishearteningly return their fixation on the lightbulb as the loud silence of the room creeps upon them.
Suddenly, JP shoots out of his seat. “He’s right.” He reaches out to the bulb and starts rattling it, tapping it, mindlessly trying to stimulate it any way he can. “Oh, dear. We might’ve thought we were prepared because we recognized that this would eventually happen, but now that it’s really coming...oh, dear.”
Hayden looks down at his pathetic stack of chips. “No, this can’t be happening. I’m going out to get us another lightbulb, boys.”
He begins to dismantle the barricade of furniture by the shop’s exit, before an abrupt thrust of wind unhinges the door and hurls Hayden backwards.
“Are you crazy? The heat’s making my face feel on fire, shut it back up!” JP shrieks.
“Then look for a bulb in here, dammit!” Hayden shouts back, somewhat reassembling the shop’s protective barrier to hold up the door.
Pete and JP hurry to opposite ends of the room. Surprisingly, their search is accompanied by Derrick, who shakes his head profusely, and Niall, who trudges around sluggishly to begrudgingly help.
They look through the break room’s file cabinets: nothing. Inside a few cupboards and shelves: nothing. Under tables and chairs, in the adjacent pantry, even inside their own pockets: absolutely nothing.
“There has to be one somewhere,” JP pants. “I just, I just don’t know where it is. But there has to be one somewhere.” A few beads of sweat begin to race one another down his face.
“Call the owner of the shop! He’s the only one that can come fix the light!” Pete cries, an evident crack in his ordinarily dulcet voice.
“He won’t pick up anyone’s call, Pete,” Niall replies blankly, now retreating to his seat.
“Just try!”
“There is no owner of the shop,” Niall declares slowly and adamantly. “He doesn’t exist. You guys never believed he did. Why can’t you come to terms with that now?”
Overcome with anxiety and fatigue, Pete slumps back against the wall. Derrick, Hayden, and JP continue to search the room, albeit with drained levels of enthusiasm.
“Friends,” Pete says optimistically. “I know that none of us, including me, really believed in him before, and I know that we can’t contact him. Yet maybe he simply has to exist. There’s no way that the game can just end like this.”
“Sure it can.” Despite the occasional fidget, Marcus is still the most composed of any of the men, having stayed put in his seat alongside Sidney the entire time. “You’re saying this because you’re now facing how uncomfortable the situation is. Don’t lose your rationality, believing in the owner is only a vain attempt to comfort yourself.”
“No, I’m trying to see it from the other perspective. Anyway, how does it make sense for our shop to not have an owner? We’re in this building that was made purely for us, we have all the tools we need right at our fingertips, and we have a ton of mind-blowing machinery around us that was made somehow. You guys are saying everything got here without any reason? We’re not working for anybody or for any purpose?”
“We all realize it doesn’t ’make perfect sense,’ but the cold hard truth is that none of this does,” Niall retorts. “That’s the whole point.”
“Well, even if we haven’t gotten in touch with the owner, nobody can tell us for sure that he doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s equally crazy to say that we know he doesn’t exist as it is to say that we know he does.”
Copyright © 2022 by Toni Livakovic
