when the chips are down

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July 9

Friday afternoon. So there I sit, in the corner of the French café, reading a book, drinking coffee and eating the best chocolate chip cookies in town - feeling pretty sad and sorry for myself about finishing my last day as teacher-la. This guy walks in and starts talking to the owner; at the end of their conversation he talks about getting a poker game going. I perk up immediately and, nearly yelling, say “I’ll play!”

After a very nice goodbye lunch with some of my students in my advanced class, I show up at 4:00 on a rainy Sunday and sit down to the table. It’s just the three of us, which normally isn’t a great number for Texas Hold ‘Em, but it turns out just fine. Raphael is the owner and Tyler is from California and Canada - two of the nicest guys you could ever hope to play cards with. We put on some music, the owner brings out some complimentary coffee and chai, everybody throws down 150 rupees (a whole four dollars) and we get down to business. The rain comes down, the cards pass around, and on the river card smiles turn to frowns.

And here’s the crazy thing - every time we’re listening to Jimi Hendrix I win the hands; every time Janis Joplin is on Raphael wins; Tyler cleans up to miscellaneous artists. So every time Jimi comes on I’m dealing cards as fast as I can, while Raphael is stalling until Janis returns.

In the usual bullshitting that accompanies any poker game, we learn that Tyler’s mother was engaged to Jimi Hendrix’s manager and, two months before the wedding, the manager died in a plane crash. After the funeral Jimi gives her his acoustic classical guitar (ivory fingerboards and all) and then soon after he himself dies by choking on his own vomit. Well, Tyler’s mother develops a horrible problem with drugs herself, and somewhere along the line she loses the guitar to some casual acquaintance. A year or so later she runs into the guy, and he says “I’ve been looking all over for you, I still have your guitar, let me get it back to you.” She gets the guitar back, kicks drugs, and sells to the Jimi Hendrix Experience Museum the guitar that, because of Jimi’s vomitous demise and it being his only classical guitar, nets a cool $200,000. She now lives happily in Toronto and is writing a book about her time with Jimi Hendrix.

The rain continues to fall outside, I can't help but feel that unsymapthetic happiness when you're warm and dry and you see completely soaked people walking out in the rain. Every time I think it just can’t get better I’m dealt a pair of jacks, or I look up and a big black bull runs past the café chased by dogs, or Raphael’s lovely Tibetan wife brings a fresh chocolate cake or quiche out of the oven for the next day’s business and the café is flooded with the most heavenly smells.

Four hours later we wrap up the game. I win 32 rupees, Tyler rakes in 219 rupees and Raphael is cleaned out. He couldn’t care less, though, because he’s going to head out for dinner and then on to watch France play in the World Cup final at the Memory Theatre. We all leave happy.

So I guess the lesson in all this is that just when you’re feeling sorry for yourself in the corner of a café or your life is in a hell of drugs, a poker game always comes along or you get your guitar back, and the next thing you know the rain has stopped, the cowshit in the streets has all been washed away, and everything smells fresh and clean.

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