A Good Gambler Never Wins

“Where’s your wine?” asked the Architect when I walked out onto the balcony to sit with him while he had his morning smoke in the morning sun. It was 9:06 AM. “I want my lawyer back. Go get your wine!” he instructed in his best Johnny Depp impression from the movie Fear and Loathing Las Vegas. That was one of the few things that we shared, that movie, and I was apparently Dr. Gonzo and he was Raoul Duke. He had some weird obsession with that movie, and I played along. He sat out on the patio overlooking old town in the hot morning sun. He sat in one of the folding blue camping chairs with a fly swatter in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It wasn’t just a regular cigarette though. It had his Fear and Loathing cigarette holder that I sent to him attached to the filter of his Camel cigarette. His look was topped off with turquoise square sunglasses and a robe from the Mirage in Las Vegas that I had brought for him.

“Well, where’s your wine?” He asked again. “It’s inside” I said, while I paused and pondered whether I should go back inside to get it. “Let’s get this party started!” he declared enthusiastically. I didn’t say anything, and I walked back into his apartment. In the kitchen I poured two tiny stainless steel teacups that we used for wine ‘glasses’ and I walked back out. I passed him a fresh cigarette before I set his wine on the tiny table that separated his two blue camping chairs. “Thanks Sweetie” he said kindly. I sat down with my wine in hand, and I looked up at the sun. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky. It’s goddamn hot!” I complained. “Goddamn bats!” he shouted, and, just like in the movie he waved his fly swatter around while he sat there pretending to fight off the imaginary bats in the sky. At least he wasn’t boring, I thought as I sat there watching him engage in his own little game.

While I sat there squinting through the morning sun, I looked around at my surroundings. I took a sip of my wine, and I thought about what time it was and how we were, I was, drinking wine in the morning. “Just call me drunky smurf,” I said. He laughed, “That’s a good one!!!! You are drunky smurf! I’m going to use that one.” He couldn’t stop laughing. He leaned over and raised the tiny steel teacup and said cheers. “You hungry?” he asked. “Yeah, I could eat. We should eat. Wait. When was the last time we ate?” I sort of asked him, but really I was asking myself aloud. “You ready?” He asked me, while he was still in his robe with his junk hanging out. I was dressed already. That particular morning I put on my red t-shirt that said Canada and a dirty pair of jeans. It was Canada day after all, a national holiday in my home country.

He walked up to his bedroom, and he was dressed in an instant. He had a special ability to throw clothes on and look like he had actually planned it out. He always looked good with whatever he decided to throw on. Or, maybe he just looked good to me. Whatever the case, soon after he was dressed, we found ourselves standing in the elevator. He pushed the button for the basement. “Going down” the voice in the elevator said.

I looked at him inquisitively after I saw which button he pressed, but he didn’t respond until the doors opened and let us out into the basement. “Let’s cut through the parking garage. The place I want to go for breakfast is closer this way,” he said out loud, as he walked towards the gate that sealed the parking garage without turning around to look at me. I don’t know what came over me, but I just followed him towards the gate, about ten paces behind. I’m not sure if I was too tired to keep up, or I was just feeling submissive and let him lead. Either way, after the gate opened, we turned left and walked down the alley in silence.

I didn’t know where we were going. I had always stayed on the main street of old town. The alley way was narrow. There was only enough room for one car. It reminded me of being in England. It looked like the back street that I would walk down from my restaurant to go to Starbucks each morning. The streets in that alley in old town weren’t exactly made of cobblestone, but they resembled it. They were brick streets. Rain gutters were everywhere. They said that the city used to be notorious for flooding.

We continued to walk for about a block and a half until we saw an A frame sign. It was both ominous and discrete. It was white with red lettering on it. It said ‘The Back Door’ in red block letters. A few feet away from the sign there stood a tall tanned man with gray hair. He wore a blue shirt, and he had his glasses folded into the collar of it. He was a unique looking man, his hair almost covered his ears and his face was flat. He was a white guy, but it didn’t look as though he belonged. There was something unique about the way he looked and carried himself. Anyway, he stood there smoking a cigarette, oblivious to our approach.

I still didn’t know where we were, or what the ‘Back Door’ was. The Architect, in the mean time, approached the man in the blue shirt. The man was receptive to the Architect and then acknowledged his presence. I stood behind him, once again passive and submissive while they began to engage in small talk. I could hear that the man in the blue shirt had an accent, but I wasn’t quite interested in that. At least not yet. I took the time to look around at my surroundings.

I soon realized that we were behind the main street of old town. There was a wall that was about eight feet high made out of bricks. Tree branches and leaves over hung the brick wall and vines encapsulated an iron gate that appeared to be an entrance to some place. I walked away from the Architect and the man in the blue shirt to investigate. Upon further investigation, I realized that I was behind a place that I had been before. On the wall, there was a discrete sign that said ‘Firehouse’. I was there on my first trip to old town, before I really knew the Architect, with two guys who I had met on the plane from Iran. I acted as their tour guide that time. It was a place, I found out, where many went to have their weddings, and that back gate led to the courtyard where they were held.

I looked around further and there was another sign. It simply said, ‘1895’. I marveled at the history that surrounded me, but then I got bored. I walked back over to where the Architect and the guy in the blue shirt stood. The two of them were still smoking and talking to one another about how to clean the filter on the Architect’s cigarette.

I touched the Architect’s arm, to let him know that I acknowledged that he needed his own time to engage in that conversation, and in silence, I walked through the ominous entrance. 

The entrance looked like I was walking into a jail cell. But, unlike a jail cell, the iron bar doors were open and people were meant to walk in voluntarily. Once I was inside, it was equally creepy. It was dark in there. It reminded me of the bar in the movie ‘From Dusk Till Dawn.’

I looked around. It was dark, and my opinion of the bar changed. Instead of reminding me of the bar from Dusk Till Dawn, it took me back to England. It was a dingy place. There was carpet on the floors, and the smell of stale beer filled the air. There was a white pillar in the center of the place that seemed to be holding up the ceiling. I walked towards the bar, and I sat down. There was an older blonde lady who was behind the bar. You could tell that she had experienced her share of hardships in life. “What can I get you started with sweetheart?” she asked while she continued to open her bar. I ordered two waters. I was the only one in the bar, and it seemed weird to me. I was slightly uncomfortable, considering that I had quickly realized that it wasn’t a bar that tourists went to, but it was frequented by locals, and I wasn’t a local. On my uncomfortable perch, I turned around and looked towards the open door for the Architect. There he was. He was peering into the open door to see where I was. His peering in comforted me, and I began to feel slightly at ease.

He walked in and sat next to me at the bar just after he had finished his cigarette. I felt so much better having him next to me. Next, the guy with the blue shirt came in. It turned out that he was the actual bartender. “What do you want to drink?” He asked us while he stood directly in front of us.

“Can we order breakfast first?” The Architect asked. The bartender didn’t say anything. He just stood there waiting for the Architect to make his order, but got bored while we looked at the menus, so he walked away. The Architect looked over at me after the bartender walked away and said, “Let’s order something and have three bites of it and we’ll be full. The problem is that he will probably be back there putting his best effort into our meals, and we’ll only have a few bites.” Apparently the bartender wasn’t just a bartender, but also the cook that morning. “I know, I can’t eat that much. Whenever I’m here I always seem to lose weight” I told him. “That’s because all we do is drink,” said the Architect. The bartender came back and just stood there looking at us again, waiting for us to order something more than water.

“Can you serve alcohol yet?” The Architect asked. Little did I know, that question would set the tone for the day. “Well, yes” was what the bartender said in his indistinctive accent. “Okay, I’ll have a club sandwich with potato salad and a White Russian. Mother’s milk,” ordered the Architect, and then he looked over to me to indicate that it was my turn. “Umm…I’ll have the bacon and eggs. Eggs over easy, dry toast…” I paused to contemplate whether I wanted to join the Architect in his early morning drinking binge some more. “…and I’ll have a White Russian too, but can I have it with milk, not cream?” “Yes,” the bartender assured.

“You ordered a Caucasian,” I said after the bartender walked away from us to make our drinks. “No, it’s called mother’s milk,” he corrected. I didn’t bother to ask why he called it that because I didn’t care to pry into anyone’s business. I figured that if he wanted to tell me why he called them that, that he would tell me. I called them Caucasians because of hearing it in the movie the Big Lebowski. I thought it was funny.

Soon after a few drinks, things began to get lively. After the bartender spoke to us a few times, and after I had a ‘Caucasian’ or two in me, I asked, “Where is your accent from?” “It is from France,” he answered. “So you can speak French?” I asked. What a stupid question that was in hindsight. He was from France. Of course he spoke French. “Ou vien tu?” I asked him in my best version of French. I was asking him which part of France he was from. He answered me back in French, but his advanced level of French and accent far exceeded my language skill. I just nodded as though I knew what he had said.

We spoke, well, he spoke French to me for as long as we were there when we were making fun of the other people in the bar. He translated it back to them, so to include them though. I was having fun practicing my French. His English was good though, he had clearly been in this country for many years. “I have been married twice, but then, I thought why am I doing this. It’s a good ocean with a lot of fish,” he said and laughed while he stood behind the very dim lit bar. Everyone laughed. We didn’t expect something like that to come from him. The Architect especially enjoyed it and shouted, “That’s my new Lawyer!” while pointing to him laughing. Nobody in the bar got the reference, except me. That was just the beginning or the day.

While we were getting drunk with the French bartender, the Architect had divulged to him that we were supposed to go to Napa Valley that afternoon. The old French bartender warned him, “That’s one thing I don’t do, ride with a chick that can kick my ass.” Apparently, he had seen and dissected the type of relationship that we had. The Architect had all of the money, but I had the unique ability to put him in his place and make decisions.

During our stay at the Back Door, a few other people had finally came in. One was the owner, and the other was a bald, short, Hispanic man. He sat at the end of the bar in what I could only assume was his regular seat. At the end of the bar, he wasn’t interacting with our banter with the bartender. Instead, he was looking down at his phone. “Hey, stop Facebooking over there!” I shouted sarcastically. He looked up from his phone and said, “I just signed up. I’m trying to figure out how to post something.” That line, to us at the time, seemed hilarious. The Architect was already knee deep into both a bottle of Kaluha and Vodka, so he laughed especially hard, which made us all laugh even harder. I was no saint though. I was keeping up with him, drink for drink, but the effects of the alcohol seemed to be overpowering him differently than they were affecting me.

It was not even 11:00 in the morning yet and things were getting out of control. “We’re supposed to go to Napa later,” I told the bartender again as he put another ‘Mother’s Milk’ in front of us. “Well...” the guy at the end of the bar said, who was now paying attention to us, “…you guys are going to need a gnap,” and he laughed. I assumed that it was an abbreviation for a good nap. Whatever he meant, we thought that was hilarious too, and everyone laughed. 

 The Architect was animated, and he made another reference to the bartender being his new lawyer again. “Hey! I’m your lawyer!” I said as I shoved him nearly knocking his unbalanced self off of the bar stool while we both laughed. “You’re on paid leave for four hours, so he’s my lawyer until then!” He laughed at his own joke. Everyone laughed. And in the middle of it all, I felt comfortable and like I had found something more than that Architect. I was on the stool next to him, and he had his legs resting on me at the bar.

The banter continued and so did the one liners from the bartender. “It’s not over until the casket closes…” the bartender said. The guy at the end of the bar got involved, “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings!” The bartender looked over at him and said, “The fat ladies are singing everywhere, and I don’t be there!” And, of course we all laughed more. “Hey it’s all a gamble,” I said. And then, words of wisdom came from the end of the bar. The Hispanic man said something that I still wonder about. It was the strangest oxymoron that I’d ever heard. Yet, it seemed to make sense. He said, “A good gambler never wins.” We all paused to contemplate what he said and we went silent.

We sat in that dark bar for just over three hours. And then, finally the Architect decided that he had had enough to drink, for the moment. He asked for the bill. While he was waiting for the bill, I got up and walked over to the owner and the Hispanic man at the end of the bar and hugged them. I thanked the owner for her hospitality. In turn she said, “You need to take care of him. He gets out of control. You are good for him. Be safe.” I was conflicted with her statement. She would be the first of many to tell me on that trip that I was good for him and that I was the only one who could keep him in check. It made me wonder what kind of shenanigans he got into when I wasn’t around. I let what she said go, and I went back to the bar stool and grabbed him by the hand and led him out of the door. 

Even though I started off leading him, or at least I thought I was, he pulled me to another direction. He wanted to see what was happening in old town. We made our way around the Firehouse and suddenly we were in the middle of old town. By then, I had no choice but to let him lead. He let go of my hand and walked ahead of me. I didn’t quite know where we were going. I didn’t think he knew where he was going, but I followed anyway. While I followed, I took pictures with my phone like a typical tourist, to remember the moment of course. He continued on, it was as though he was looking for something, someone, but I didn’t ask.

We walked on the boardwalk past the pretentious tourist trap shops, the other tourists, and out of no where, he chose one of the stores to go into. It was a sock store. The walls were covered with socks, there were racks full of socks, and there were even socks at the cashier. “Get whatever you want,” The Architect told me, and we went in different directions in the store looking at whatever stood out to us. I wandered around the store, but then eventually I went back to where he was standing. He has beckoned one of the sales assistants, and when I got there, she was using the long poles to get a pair of socks from one of the higher racks. “Well, did you find anything?” The Architect asked. “No,” I said dryly. I was bored, but he was having a good time. It was becoming a theme of ours. He was having a great time, while I was in the background waiting to catch him when he fell, both figuratively and literally.

Money was never an obstacle for him, so I decided to indulge. I picked up three pairs of socks. One pair I had intended to send to Flagstaff, and the other two pairs were for me. One pair was of the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, and the other pair had something to do with wine. $140.00 later, we walked out of the sock store, with six pairs of socks. That seemed excessive to me, but he didn’t bat an eye. After we left the store, he decided that it was about time that we headed to Napa, so we walked back to his apartment.

On our way, he remembered something. “Oh yeah, we need to put the doors back on the Jeep,” he instructed in a slurred voice. I had never put doors on a Jeep before, and it proved to be comedic. “The doors are upstairs in my bedroom,” he continued. “We’ll have to carry them down. And just as we went upstairs to get the doors, I went into the bathroom first, and that was when I noticed it.

Going to back to California on that trip was a gamble. I always thought that I was a good gambler, but in the bathroom, in plain sight on the shelf, there was eye cream and raspberry hand sanitizer. My mom was right. He did have a different jockey. But, what could I say? I lived two states away, and I only showed up every month or so. I had to suck it up and when I came out of the bathroom, I walked upstairs into his room and helped him carry the Jeep doors downstairs. I did my best to swallow my emotions, and I pretended that I didn’t know what was going on. He was just drunk enough to buy the act. While really, I was devastated. I played the role of a good gambler, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to win. It was just like the guy at the end of the bar said. The drive to Napa Valley would prove to be one of the most interesting road trips ever.