The Ballad of a Small Player
The dealer shuffled the cards again and we took our ease, bantering about the trade. He then asked me if I felt inclined to take on another hand. I was now feeling roused, aggressive. A sudden win will do that to you. It will lift you out of months of depression and self- doubt, days of quiet dread. A surge of animal arrogance of the kind that one needs to feel in order to remember that you are alive. Doomed to be alive.
“The least I can do,” he muttered, “is lose it myself.”