The Bookmaker’s Lament
We are far enough now into Autumn that I can say for sure things will never be the same as they once were. Boredom creeps in during what has always been my busiest season. My phone doesn’t ring the way it used to. The bell on the door of my secret operating headquarters in the back room behind a barbershop legally owned by a degenerate gambler who got too far behind on his debts doesn’t tinkle as often as in previous Harvest times.
I sit alone and stare at a wall, wishing it were a window, but it’s not. In the good times, the bustling times, I would not want people to see inside at the business being conducted in this room of sin. Now, I wish they could see through the wall at my loneliness. Perhaps then they would think of what has been taken from me.
On Sundays, the football games bring me no joy. I used to giggle with delight after a backdoor cover, imagining all the losers kicking in their own television sets and getting mouthy with their wives. Smiling as I count my profits in my head while I daydream of collection — the failures who will pay up easy, the turkeys I’ll have to chase, the deadbeats I’ll need to hurt. Now, the vision of a grown man sobbing is in the reflection on my television screen. The same screen that mocks what my life has become with every advertising break in gridiron action.
Professional athletes, movie stars, rock gods, all shilling for the instrument of my downfall. The prediction markets. Legalized betting, right on your phone, from the comfort of your own home. Hall of Fame Quarterbacks, smiling through the screen, commanding you to look in their baby blue eyes as a distraction from the phone number for the problem gambling hotline barely visible in small print at the bottom of the screen. At least I’m not trying to fool anybody. I look like a guy who will break your leg if you don’t pay me, not like one whose femur snapped in half when his spikes got stuck in the mud during a vicious hit from a Pro Bowl Linebacker. I look like your worst nightmare, not like a guy you’d cast as the handsome partner to a pottymouth stand-up in a low-budget buddy cop comedy movie after he’s forced to retire from the only game he’s ever known.
You can’t place a bet with me from the comfort of your own home. I don’t talk business over the phone; that’s how the guy who previously ran this book got arrested. If you want to wager with me, you gotta walk into the barbershop, make awkward small talk with the owner who knows why you’re actually there, finally get around to asking, “is Big Guy in the back?” get asked, “are you sure you don’t want a trim?” respond, “yeah, I just gotta see BG real quick,” watch as a look of sadness melts into one of acceptance on the barber’s face, and then walk into hell. I call my bookmaking office hell. Because it’s hot in there. Because of the no windows.
This used to be a proper country. Where men were men and where reckless gambling didn’t earn you bonus bet cash-back rewards offers and profit boost tokens; it got you a line of credit with obscene juice I knew you weren’t good for and would never be able to pay, so you’d have to recompense with political favors. What has become of this land that I loved?
Some things should stay buried in the shadows. Some things belong to the night. Bringing them out in the open and letting them be part of the mainstream corrupts what was once pure and good. Some things need to stay in the hot, stagnant air of the windowless rooms behind front barbershops where they can cry in stifling solitude and wonder what comes next for them after their purpose has been ripped away by heartless capitalist monsters and their handsome-faced quarterback frontmen.
Just like that beautiful, blue-eyed gunslinger whose leg aches whenever it’s about to rain, I’ve been forced into early retirement from the only game I’ve ever known. Maybe I can make the move into acting and get a part in that buddy cop comedy movie. Don’t all those movies need a henchman who gets roasted by the stand-up with offensive ethnic stereotypes before the QB hits him in the face with a projectile from long distance? I’d bet they do, but I’m not a betting man. At least, not anymore.
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