The Game With No Eight Ball

Dev rented the back booth in my hall for lunch hour, three days a week, with a laptop and a phone propped against the sugar jar. He wore a collared shirt. He called it work.

I called it nothing at first. A man in a collared shirt gets the benefit of the doubt in my place, which tells you something about me. But I noticed he never ate the sandwich. He watched the screen, and his knee bounced under the table, and every few minutes he said a word under his breath that I will not print.

One afternoon the game on table two ended. Two fellows shook hands, racked their cues, and went back to their jobs. Clean. Finished. Somebody won, somebody lost, and the felt was empty.

Dev watched them go. Then he said, not really to me, "You know what I envy? Their game stops."

I sat down across from him. He told me he had started trading small, on his phone, to see what it felt like. Now he checked it at red lights. He checked it at his daughter's recital, sneaking a glance in the dark. He said he never felt finished, not even on a good day, because there was always one more move waiting.

I have thought about that for years. A pool game ends when the eight ball drops. A card game ends when the chips run out or somebody stands up. That screen had no eight ball. It would take everything a man offered it and never once say that's enough.

That is the thing worth knowing. When there is no natural end, the ending has to come from you, and people who are caught by it usually cannot find the door alone.

Dev closed the laptop that day. He took a while to actually eat the sandwich.

If your thumb will not leave the screen, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET.

Find the eight ball.

Sal