Face Up on the Rail

A young fella I'll call Marcus came in on a Tuesday afternoon, racked a table, and did something I had not seen in sixty years of pool halls. He laid his phone face up on the rail and let it run beside the cue ball.

On the screen was a basketball game between two colleges neither of us could have found on a map. I asked who he was rooting for. He thought about it. "Whoever covers," he said, and he laughed, but it did not sound like laughing.

His thumb never rested. Every few minutes the screen lit up with something new. Bet the next basket. Bet the next foul. Bet again, we'll soften the blow. He was not watching the game. He was watching the buzz.

Here is what I told him, and I told it gently. In my day a bet took work. You needed a bookie, a telephone, a fella named Sully who might not pick up. Every step gave a man a second to change his mind, and plenty of nights that second saved me. Now there are no steps. There is a thumb, and somebody paid good money to park it right where yours already rests.

That is the part nobody warns you about. It is not weakness. It is a door that has been oiled until it opens by itself. Nobody chooses well when the choice has been made to feel like nothing.

Marcus looked at the phone a long while. Then he turned it face down on the rail. It buzzed twice more, and he let it. We shot three games. He lost all three and seemed the happiest man in Ohio. He told me his shoulders felt lighter, which is what happens when you stop carrying something that was never yours to carry.

That is not a system, son, and it is not a promise. It is just a little distance, put back where the app took it out. If the buzzing is winning, tell somebody. The National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET.

Anything that asks nothing of you to place will ask a great deal to keep.

Sal