A Closed Book

Irene kept the books for a feed store in Dayton, and she could run a column of figures faster than I could rack a table. One slow Tuesday she sat at the end of my counter with a roll of scratch tickets and a dime from her coin purse, and she worked through them without looking up.

I asked how she was doing. She said she was getting something back. The week before, she had lost forty dollars of the grocery money at the gas station, and she was sure that if she stayed with it she could put the forty back before her husband noticed. By that Tuesday it was not forty anymore. She knew the exact figure. Bookkeepers always do. She said it out loud like a total at the bottom of a page, and then she kept scratching.

I told her about a night in Wheeling when I lost a stake to a farmer's son, a polite kid who never said a word. I should have gone to bed down that one night. Instead I stayed two more days trying to fetch it back, and I lost the rent, the car payment, and the good opinion of a landlady who had never once raised her voice at me. I was not playing to win anymore. I was playing to make a number go away.

That is the thing nobody tells you. The money you lost is not waiting at the next table. It left the building when you lost it, and every try to retrieve it just sends more after it.

Irene was quiet a while. Then she folded the roll of tickets in half, dropped it in my trash can, and said a bookkeeper knows a closed book when she sees one. She said she would tell him that night, while it was still the small number.

I do not know how it went. She did not come back. But she walked out standing straighter than she came in.

If chasing has started to feel like the only option, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET.

Close the book. Start the next page clean.

Sal