"Behave yourself with the working girls," she said. "I'll see you in two weeks."
"Bye," Oliver said.
Jacky hung up, and Oliver turned to Verdi. "I'm in trouble," he said.
At least she hadn't said anything to Francesca. He paced around the room. What was happening? He was sliding into a life with Jacky. She could keep him going while he looked for work; he could work anywhere. Maybe he would do most of the cooking. What would it be like to wake up next to her every morning? His head spun. What was wrong with this picture? Anything? Something.
Atlantic City. When Oliver was confused, he tended to put himself in a situation and see what happened. He was better at resilience than calculation; he relied on his ability to pick himself up, dust himself off, and learn from experience. When he tried to think about the future, his mind turned off. He needed something more concrete to think about. Casinos.
The next morning, he bought a book on gambling from the bookstore next to the Victory Deli. He had never been crazy about cards. He had played enough poker to know how brutal it was. The smartest and toughest player won. If you were smarter and tougher, you might as well just take the other person's wallet. It was worse than that. Not only did you take his money, but you left him feeling responsible, stupid, and broken. Oliver didn't want to be on either end of that exchange.
As he read about blackjack, he decided against it. He would actually have odds in his favor if he could count cards without being caught and thrown out of the casino. He probably could count cards with practice; he'd been a math major in college; he was comfortable with numbers. But it would be a lot of work. And he didn't like the idea of relating to the dealer as an opponent, an enemy working for the house. The dealer was just trying to make a living.
Roulette was O.K., but it seemed too mechanical and small in scale. The best roulette odds were not as good as the best odds in craps. Craps had a traditional sound to it. Oliver studied craps.
Players stood around an enclosed table and took turns throwing a pair of dice. On the first throw, the player "passed" if a 7 or an 11 came up. A 2, 3, or 12 was a "no pass." Any other number became the "point." The player continued to roll until either the point came up again, a pass, or a 7 was rolled, a no pass. All players could bet on every roll.
Custom required that a player continue rolling until he or she did not pass. The dice were then pushed to the next player in turn around the table. There were many different bets, simple and complicated. You could bet that a player would pass or not pass or that a number would be rolled before a 7. The complicated bets had large payoffs and correspondingly smaller chances of winning. The simplest bet had the best odds, winning just under 50% of the time. If you played only the bets with the best odds, you could consider the house edge as a 2% charge for hosting the game and keeping it honest. You would lose if you played long enough. But you could get ahead and quit. Maybe.