The God Game. Jeffrey Round

who laid the first wager. It might have been old Satan in the Garden of Eden tempting Adam and Eve with his apple trick: Go ahead, the odds are good today. Chances are no one will see you do it. C’mon. Whatcha wanna bet? If it was that moment, then house bias was already in play long before anyone could outlaw it.

      Many of the old games are still popular today: poker, craps, blackjack, and roulette have been around for centuries. Legend has it a form of keno was used to raise the funds that built the Great Wall of China. There are as many ways to gamble as things to gamble on. Whenever anything contains an element of chance, someone will lay odds on the outcome. Sports, political elections, the sex of a royal baby, the statistical probability of whether a single bullet loaded in the barrel of a gun will fire when it’s your turn to pull the trigger, or the added frisson of betting whether the cobra in the wicker basket will bite you or the fool seated beside you when it’s loosed. But there is always a bright side: if you lose, there’s no need to worry about collecting.

      Gamblers have pressed four-leaf clovers into their wallets, while others have turned to charms like allspice and horseshoes the way the devoted light candles to the saints. Animal body parts have long been prized as talismans, the most popular being lucky rabbit’s feet (not so lucky for the rabbit, Dan thought), alligator teeth, and even a raccoon penis (a.k.a. the “coon dong”), the latter said to be especially potent when wrapped in a $20 bill. But then gamblers weren’t always the smartest or luckiest people on earth. Sometimes they needed all the help they could muster while their wives sat at home cursing them and the kiddies wished daddy would just come back and eat a decent meal with them once in a while. Losing your husband to another woman was bad enough, but when that woman turned out to be Lady Luck herself, she was damn near impossible to beat.

      As addictions went, Dan knew, gambling was one of the less physically harmful. It caused none of the vein depletions and skin lesions of heroin and crack. It wouldn’t dry your liver or rot your brain. In fact, many gamblers lived to a ripe old age. But as psychological addictions went, it was one of the worst. For centuries, mothers had lamented it, lovers feared it. Families had been sacrificed for the roll of a die, kingdoms lost to the turn of a card.

      And that was just for starters. Many were the men who ended up face-down in a freshly dug grave for want of a payback plan to satisfy their backers. Others spent their last few moments of conscious recollection on riverbeds or falling from bridges over ravines and gorges designed for more spectacular viewing pleasures.

      In olden days, upper-class women were not supposed to gamble. But set up a prohibition and eventually someone will try to get around it. Thus the fashionable women of England in the late eighteenth century who came to be known as the Faro Ladies came about, hosting private parties and turning cards late into the night.

      Most countries today allow gambling, but if you can’t find something to suit your tastes you can always turn to the internet to squander your wages. It’s said that the Fool, the tarot card designated with the number zero, is a man ruined by gambling. One of the most popular folk-rock songs of all time tells the fate of a card shark who goes down to infamy in New Orleans.

      Dan Sharp’s Aunt Marge called a pack of cards the Devil’s Bible, adding gambling to the list of sins she asked young Danny never to engage in — swearing, drinking, and lying chief among them. At ten, he’d promised away any and all future indulgences just to put a smile on her face, never for a moment thinking he might wish it otherwise as he grew older. Later, he’d been amazed that sex hadn’t been number one on that list. Perhaps she’d thought his only salvation there lay in total ignorance.

      He thought of his Aunt Marge with a smile when he finally struck it lucky at an address in Little Vietnam. The street was tucked away on a rise behind the train tracks. The man leaning against the door twirled a toothpick between his lips as he scrutinized Dan, giving a hard look at the scar on the side of his face.

      “Tony Moran said I might have a good game in here,” Dan said.

      A grin cracked the man’s otherwise non-expressive face. He inclined his head and nodded Dan inside, shutting the door quickly behind them.

      A Buddha sat amid an offering of oranges and incense sticks, winking a knowing eye like a jolly proprietor. It was Fat Buddha, the Buddha later in his career after he’d passed many trials and penetrated through to the core of reality and found nothingness there, as well as a whole lot to eat. Fat Buddha is the guy you want on your side when you’re looking for luck. Fat Buddha is the key to happiness. Dan winked back as he passed the Buddha by.