He got up, his limbs stiff and dull as wood, and stumbled in to the tiny kitchen. He made a cup of chamomile tea to settle his stomach. The pot whistled as he tried to shake off the spell. As feeling returned, he sat at the tiny table and sipped in the dark. The speckled Formica glowed in the moonlight. He needed help, he realized. He had been utterly competent most of his life, but now he was in over his head—with his gambling, with Jorgenson, with his failing relationships and his enormous debts. He was coming apart on the inside. But there was no one to help him, no one who could understand, or offer aid and counsel.
He began to make a list. He would find the local Gamblers Anonymous group and he would get a Big Book. He doubted it would do any good—after all, gambling was not an addiction like alcohol—but he wrote it down. He would go to Carol and fix things with her. He would take Julie camping or shopping—whatever she wanted to do—in order to rekindle their relationship. Make more of an effort. Get over himself. He could feel a sense of normalcy and resolve returning as the list grew.
He had never before done anything like what Jorgenson was asking of him, but he tried to make a list for that, too. He would try to become Eagle’s friend, he thought, and then he would search his house. The thought seemed ludicrous, like something out of a movie. He imagined breaking in, only to learn that it was all a big mistake. Eagle was probably planning to open a fast food restaurant, or something equally innocuous. He would tell Jorgenson that he had it all wrong. Jorgenson would be relieved, and he would give JW another chance. JW would put his nose to the grindstone and stay away from the casino, he would make his payments, he would be home every night for dinner, at church every Sunday; he would slowly work himself out of debt and earn back Carol’s trust. Slow and steady is what he needed, just like everyone else. Conservative, clean, no more crazy risks. And no more gambling, ever again.
As JW imagined this new reality, his earlier sense of dread and anxiety began to dissipate. He had a plan in his notepad. Life was not out of control. He carried it back into the bedroom and set it on the nightstand. He lay back down, and slipped into a turgid, tentative sleep.
He woke in the late light of mid-morning, and after showering he dressed in a crisp white shirt and a nice fall suit. The ominous, unsettled feeling still lingered from the night before, but he had a plan. He stepped out of the trailer and locked the flimsy aluminum door behind him. During the ride back to town he reviewed his list, and with the mental activity the feeling began to subside.
He drove first to the county library, where he used the Internet to find the local Gamblers Anonymous chapters. One of them was meeting just before lunch in the basement of Christ Lutheran Church, an old white clapboard structure north of town. He hated the idea of joining a group like this, especially considering his stature. The whole thing seemed stupid to him, the kind of thing that he imagined urban liberals did to get in touch with their feelings. It demanded a willingness to sit among people who were not functioning at his level of accomplishment, and it would also be damaging to his reputation. He would have to find a way to redefine his identity in a way that didn’t seem so broken, that allowed him to maintain more self-respect—and more importantly, the respect of others—and allowed him room for professional redemption. But first he needed the damn book. He had agreed to get one and “carry it around” with him, as Jorgenson had put it. He would have to suck it up and go to the meeting.
The church sat a few miles out of North Lake, on a two-lane ribbon of eroded blacktop that mostly served as a field-access road for local sugar-beet farmers. It was surrounded by a stand of oaks and a small cyclone-fenced cemetery with tilted headstones. JW parked behind a large four-by-four pickup—knobby tires and mud flaps the size of his car doors, bearing silver naked ladies—where his Caprice would not be seen from the road. He got out and waited for a car to pass, then followed another man into a side door and down a set of concrete steps.
In the basement a sign directed him through a service area and into a meeting room with a gray painted cement floor and walls, and joists painted white above. There was an old inlaid-wood card table bearing a stack of Big Books near the door. A hand-lettered sign on the table read, “If you need one, take one.” JW took one and turned to leave, but more people were coming in behind him, so he took a seat on a metal folding chair in the back row. The room smelled of rosewater, which was probably the only dignified thing about it in his mind. A pale yellow plywood sign was mounted on the wall nearby, bearing the hand-painted words Character Assets in shiny red letters with blue painted shadows. A long list followed in blue letters with red bullets:
self forgiveness • humility • self-valuation • promptness • straightforwardness • trust • forgiveness • simplicity • love • honesty • patience • activity • modesty • positive thinking • generosity • look for the good!
This last phrase was in a rollicking red script that dipped up and down as if it were written on the peaks and valleys of a carnival ride. JW was growing anxious to leave, but two men stood conversing in the doorway, so he remained in his chair with his legs and hands crossed, the Big Book on his lap.
Below the wooden sign was a paper one made from several pages of computer printout. There’s Nothing So Bad That Gambling Won’t Make It Worse, it said, followed by four exclamation points. In the lower left corner, it bore a small image of a royal flush with a circle and a line through it.
The basement’s white concrete walls had high dusty windows. A cobweb glinted in the sunlight. Hosta leaves grew thick on the other side of the glass. JW thought about the royal flush on the computer printout, imagined getting the deal in some casino poker game, and fantasized about how much he would win. (“A hundred thousand dollars!”)
“Visitor, please stand,” the meeting’s chair was saying to him.
JW looked around. The meeting was in session and people were looking at him. He noticed that an older woman with kind eyes had sat down next to him.
“I’m sorry, I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” he said.
“He asked you to stand,” she said with a warm smile. “Don’t worry.”
The chair was middle-aged, balding, and wore a navy blue plumber’s uniform bearing a patch embroidered with the name “Gary.”
“Thank you,” JW whispered to the woman next to him. He stood and smoothed his suit jacket, realizing as he did so that he had slipped into exactly the position he wanted to avoid: junior to some well-meaning—but less intelligent and less successful—gambling addicts.
“I’m Gary L.,” the man said, “and in keeping with Gamblers Anonymous tradition, we’re going to start by asking you twenty questions. If you answer yes to seven or more I’m going to ask you if you think you’re a compulsive gambler. All right?”
JW glanced around at the faces watching him. The farmer with the long brown face and fingernails. The frizzy-haired waitress with rashy cheeks. The implement salesman with blonde bangs combed long and low across his forehead. The kind-looking woman in mom clothes, who wore a home detention ankle bracelet. They seemed encouraging, but all of it was mildly disgusting. They knew nothing about him—what he did, what he knew, what he had accomplished—or the position he had in the community. Who were they, to judge him?
“I think you can probably skip the questions,” he said, a hand in his pocket in his best business-conference-presenter persona.
“Well, it’s our procedure,” replied the chair.
“That’s fine, but, you know, I was just going to leave,” said JW, pointing in the direction of the door. “I just wanted to get the book and then the door was blocked. I’m sorry to disrupt your meeting—”
“That’s fine,” said Gary, in a tone that struck JW as surprisingly gentle for a plumber. He suddenly felt that it would be rude of him to leave. He lifted an arm.
“You know what? Go ahead,” he said, and smiled around the room. “You all seem like reasonable people.”
“Okay.”