‘I wanted to help but I think I just wanted to prove myself. And now I failed at both. The Mother Superior forbade me from going and I went. And tomorrow I’m going to bust out and I’ll have nothing to show for it, and the convent will close down because they won’t have the money, and the people back home, the ones who are struggling just to make ends meet as it is, they won’t even have the kitchen anymore. It really isn’t much, but sometimes a little is all anyone has.’

  ‘I think you’re being too hard on yourself. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll tell you to say one Our Father and two Hail Marys and we’ll call it quits, all right? I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Go in peace.’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’

  22

  She stayed in the church for a long time. She sat on a pew and she said her prayers. A great bone-weary tiredness enveloped her. Her body felt like a great bell that had been struck repeatedly, so that it vibrated now with tiny thrums of tension. And in her mind there were all the hands she’d played, pot odds and player behaviour and what she could have done, what she could have done differently…

  ‘All you need is a chip and a chair.’

  It wasn’t a hallucination. It was a sort of pleasant daydream, induced by the warmth inside the church and the smell of incense and the whisper of voices in prayer.

  ‘Dad. I missed you.’

  ‘I miss you too, kid.’

  ‘Dad, it’s all gone wrong. I don’t…’ She blinked. She felt enveloped in fog, warm, comforting. It was hard to think straight. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’

  ‘It’s just a game, kid.’

  ‘It was your life!’

  ‘But that was my life, kid. And it didn’t make your mum happy, and I hated that I couldn’t be a better husband, or a better father, when it comes to that… I missed all your birthdays. I never saw you sing in that school play.’

  ‘I was terrible.’

  ‘That’s kind of the point, kid.’

  He smiled. He was sitting beside her now. It was the way he’d looked before the cancer, before he got so thin and gaunt and with eyes that seemed to stare into infinity. Before he’d gone to sit next to the Big Blind in the sky.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you too, Dad.’

  ‘You’re a good person, Claire. Life is a bit like poker. You get bad beats, and then you pick up a flush on the river and you’re top of the world again. I played cards because I loved cards, Claire. I loved the game, the odds, the hours, the company… It didn’t make me a good person, it was just who I was and what I chose to become. You made a choice, too. You can still follow it.’

  ‘Is life really like poker, Dad?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t. I told you, poker’s just a g—’

  ‘Miss? Miss!’

  She blinked back tears. A figure in the haze, resolved into a stooped, apologetic-looking woman. ‘We’re about to close. It’s very late.’

  ‘Sorry. I’ll… Sorry.’

  But when she stepped out into the night, and that slow drizzle of rain, all the streetlights wore golden halos, and all the corners looked smudged and soft and filled with their own internal glow, and she walked back to the hotel on lighter feet, and when she fell asleep, at last, her sleep was deep, and dark, and uninterrupted.

  23

  Day 2.

  Lights…

  Camera—

  Action.

  ‘Shuffle up and… deal!’

  * * *

  She didn’t look at the cards, just said, ‘All-in,’ and shoved that single chip across the felt.

  * * *

  Action around her but she won the side pot and doubled up. She lifted her eyes and looked at them, with a faint smile, and said, ‘Let’s do that again.’

  * * *

  ‘All-in.’

  Still not looking at her cards. When the river came and she had to turn them over, she was surprised to discover her pocket seven matched the river and she’d doubled up again.

  * * *

  ‘All-in.’

  ‘I’m not playing with her,’ someone said, and folded. The next one shrugged and raised, and the rest folded, so it was just Claire and him in the pot.

  ‘Third time lucky,’ she said, and turned over her cards.

  The flop came ace-deuce-eight and the turn was a queen and the river was a deuce and the guy she was playing against grunted because he was holding a pair of aces and Claire, it turned out, had a pocket deuce.

  * * *

  ‘A deuce on the river never changes anything, you know, Don.’

  ‘It’s a cold day in hell when it does, Mike.’

  * * *

  After that she sat back and breathed. The next hand was free and she mucked it. The next hand after that she pushed on the button and took down the blinds, with no contest. And then, just like that, she was back in the game.

  * * *

  ‘Nice hand,’ he said.

  She looked across the table at Danny Boy Pearson.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He smiled. He had a nice smile. He hadn’t shaved, and he wore a faded T-shirt with the EPC logo on it. He looked exactly like a guy who’s made twenty million dollars playing live poker, which is what he was. He looked down at his cards.

  ‘Raise.’

  She looked down at hers. He would be putting her all-in again… and she had an ace-king.

  ‘Call.’

  His smile grew. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

  ‘You want to knock me out that bad?’

  ‘I just want to play.’

  He turned over a pair of queens.

  ‘Figures.’

  Flop came three, queen, seven.

  Danny Boy had three of a kind.

  ‘Jesus,’ someone said.

  ‘Please,’ Claire said, ‘Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.’

  ‘What are you, some kind of a nun?’

  She stared at the board. So this is it, she thought. Day 2, and she was busting out.

  A jack on the turn. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

  ‘One time,’ she said. ‘Just one time.’

  The dealer turned over the river and she found herself looking at a ten.

  She’d made a straight – and doubled up again.

  ‘Nice hand,’ Danny Boy said, again.

  * * *

  What you didn’t understand about tournament play was how much of it you spent not playing. How much of it was just sitting there, hour after hour, mucking hands, waiting as other players got involved, bet, raised, called, folded, busted out, agonised over decisions that must have seemed so fundamentally important at the time but which, a moment later, became insignificant, lost to time. The blinds kept going up and the competition became fierce as they were coming closer to the bubble. And some people aggressively went all-in, trying to double up quickly or go bust, and others held on to their short stacks for dear life, trying to survive just the next big blind, and the next, just hold on to the table for just long enough to make it through the bubble, and get paid off.

  But so much of it was just sitting there, watching other people play, biding your time, waiting for cards, watching the players watching the players watching the players, and trying to work out each person’s range, and what they would bet and when they would try to bluff. And just trying to stay awake.

  But it was coming down to the bubble and after a couple of hours of play Claire was back up, with a comfortable stack in front of her, about the tournament average, and for the first time she felt confident in where she was. The bubble was fast approaching but she had no fear of it. Players busted out and as they did more tables were carried out of the Grand Hall and now there was finally space, and the air felt cooler, but into this new space now came the spectators, and the camera crews, and she began to feel a new kind of nervousness, now, as the eye of the camera swept across the tables with the red light blinking and she suddenly thought, Wait, am I going to be on television?

  * * *

  ‘You’re going to hell,’ Mephistopheles said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Hell!’ He shrieked with laughter and spread out his arms like a cross. ‘All-in!’

  The two players between them folded. She looked at his stack. He was short.

  Did she want to take him on? Mephistopheles was an amateur, and unpredictable. He could have aces, but equally he could have suited connectors or… nothing.

  And she had him covered.

  She looked at her cards, and found a pair of sixes. She figured he could have a higher pair, but she didn’t think so. She figured he had two over-pairs. Ace-king, ace-queen. It would be a coin toss.

  ‘See you there,’ she said, and committed her chips.

  Mephistopheles pouted. Everyone else folded back to him so he and Claire both flipped their cards over.

  ‘A jack-ten?’ she said.

  ‘Hey, they’re suited connectors.’

  ‘You don’t go all-in on suited connectors!’

  ‘They’re still over-cards,’ someone else said.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said.

  The dealer dealt the flop. It was a rainbow board, ace, seven, deuce.

  ‘I like you,’ Mephistopheles said unexpectedly. ‘I hope you win this thing.’

  ‘Just got to dodge a ten or a jack,’ she said. ‘Or I’m out.’

  ‘One time,’ Mephistopheles said. He looked very sorry for having made the bet. ‘Just one time.’

  The turn came, and then the river. Sooner or later, her father once said, the river must always come.

  She’d dodged a ten, and she’d dodged a jack. And, suddenly, she was up with a big healthy stack.

  ‘Good game, good game,’ Mephistopheles said. He kept sitting there, for a bit. Claire swept the chips to her side and began stacking them up.

  ‘Good game.’ Then he got up and wandered off.

  * * *

  ‘That was an interesting hand there, Mike. A strange all-in—’

  ‘Not really, Don. It’s eat-or-be-eaten time, and I think Mephistopheles was just trying to steal the pot. He was hoping no one had anything—’

  ‘And in a way, they didn’t. I mean, a pair of sixes, Mike?’

  ‘A pair’s a pair, at this point in the game, Don. It was an impressive call – she obviously had a good read on him and, ultimately, decided on a calculated gamble.’

  ‘A talented young player from Ireland there, Mike – but let’s go back to the Featured Table, where Danny Boy is in a hand against another young Irish player—’

  * * *

  Then it all stopped. They played one table at a time, one hand at a time, waiting for the next all-in raise and call – waiting for the last person to be knocked out before the bubble. In the sudden pause people checked their phones or listened to music or chatted, or went to the bathroom, or ordered a drink. Claire prayed. It wasn’t about the money, or winning, or anything like that. It was just a small, private prayer, a way to express how grateful she was, for everything. The Grand Hall faded around her, the chatter and noise, until there was only her, and God, listening.

  ‘…and Doug “Moonlight” Graham busts out in eighty-eighth place, with pocket aces against “Kicker” Sinclair’s straight—’

  Shouts, laughter, people high-fiving, cries of ‘Bubble boy! Bubble boy!’

  …and just like that, they were in the money.

  * * *

  There was a sense, at that point, of a sort of loosening. The short stacks, having stuck it out that long, were finally in the money – that is, they were now guaranteed a payout if they busted – so many went all-in trying to double up quickly or bust out with the cash. As for the big stacks, they were knuckling down for the serious prize – a spot at the Final Table. This was the time for real poker, for running deep, for making it. A field of a thousand, shrank to eighty-seven, soon to shrink further – but there were still nine tables left, and no one was taking anything for granted.

  She saw Mikey was still in. He was chatting to one of the television producers. During the break she went to the bathroom and found herself next to Jennifer “Pocket Jacks” Jackson again.

  ‘So you’re still in.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  Jackson wiped her hands on a paper towel. ‘Good for you,’ she said.

  * * *

  In the cubicle when she could be alone she said a short prayer of thanks.

  Finishing in the money, even if it wasn’t the big money, it was still a lot – eight grand for the next few people to bust out and then the payouts got progressively bigger. And she could give this much, at least, to the convent. It might not be life-changing money but to the people who relied on the nuns and their outreach it would be, at the very least, life sustaining.

  So she said her thanks, sitting there on the loo, and then she got up, because she was going to play the best she’d ever played, and she wasn’t going to get knocked out, and, ‘Good for you,’ she whispered, and glared for just a moment at the door to the place beyond where Jennifer Jackson had been, and then she laughed and went back to the Hall.

  Where things had changed.

  * * *

  ‘Claire Byrne?’

  ‘Yes?’

  It was a TV presenter, one she recognised from watching previous shows. Holding a microphone in one hand, smiling at her disarmingly.

  ‘Could we do a quick interview?’

  ‘For television? I don’t…’

  ‘Only a minute.’

  She had such a nice smile. And the microphone was suddenly in Claire’s face, and the lights, and the camera, and she stood there smiling stupidly, not sure what—

  ‘Is it true you’re a nun?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We understand you’ve come here from a convent in Ireland, to—?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  The presenter’s smile hovered, stayed.

  ‘It’s true, though, right?’

  ‘I am not a – excuse me.’

  She left abruptly. The presenter’s smile stayed. ‘An extraordinary development,’ she said brightly, ‘as it turns out that, for the first time in EPC history, we have a nun playing the Main Event! Claire Byrne, daughter of legendary player Dave “Snake Eyes” Byrne, who passed away tragically last year. Claire, we understand, is a novice nun from a little convent in Ireland and—’

  * * *

  Claire sat in the chair, fuming.

  Mikey!

  She’d seen him talking to one of the producers, but she didn’t think anything of it, not then…

  It had to be him!

  She felt violated, her private life suddenly exposed on the screen. How dare they? she thought. It wasn’t their business, it wasn’t anyone’s business!

  ‘Miss? Follow me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re moving tables.’

  She bagged her chips, got up. Followed the producer as if in a dream. The camera followed her as she wove her way between the tables to—

  ‘The Featured Table?’

  ‘TV time,’ the producer said, and smiled.

  At registration, she’d signed a waiver form. Agreeing to appear on TV, agreeing to interviews…

  She wasn’t just going to quit.

  She took a deep breath. She was here for a reason, a good reason. She wasn’t playing for herself.

  ‘All right,’ she said. She felt the tension leave her as she sat down, Danny Boy on her right, Mikey across from her. “Kicker” Sinclair was on the big blind and a hand was in progress. She emptied her bag onto the table and began stacking chips. Mikey saw her and flashed her a grin and she ignored him. Stacking chips, one pile, then another, then another. She had a decent-sized stack and she wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  ‘Raise,’ Mikey announced, and pushed a big bet across, casually. The hand got folded to Danny Boy, who studied Mikey for a while, thinking. Then he folded and it came to her. She was on the small blind.

  ‘Re-raise,’ she said, and she pushed half her stack across. The big blind folded quickly. Mikey stared at her with an almost wounded look in his eyes. She kept her face impassive. He studied her. The red light of the television camera blinked.

  ‘Stop Hollywooding, Mikey,’ someone said, and someone else laughed.

  He kept staring at her. Kept playing with his chips. Checked his cards. She kept her face impassive.

  ‘Clock,’ someone finally said. A producer came and stood near Mikey.

  ‘Time’s been called. You have one minute to make a decision, or your hand will be mucked. Starting now.’

  ‘What do you have?’ Mikey said.

  ‘Fifty seconds.’

  His stack was shorter than hers. Please think I’m bluffing, she thought.

  ‘Forty seconds.’

  . . .

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  . . .

  ‘Twenty se—’

  Mikey pushed his cards across the felt, face down, to the dealer.

  Claire gathered chips.

  * * *

  ‘A bit of a rivalry developing at our Featured Table between the two Irish players, Mike.’

  ‘Let’s look at this next hand. Danny Boy folds under the gun. Over to our nun—’

  ‘A nun, Don? I guess it’s true what they say.’

  ‘What do they say, Mike?’

  ‘In poker, all you need is a chip and a prayer.’

  ‘Don’t give up your day job, Mike.’

  ‘Claire looks down at her cards… She finds a pair of sevens.’

  ‘What would you do in this position, Don?’

  ‘I’d raise, the question is, how much.’

  ‘Claire raises forty thousand.’

  ‘The next two players fold to Mikey. Look at the way he’s looking at Claire—’

  ‘Sparks there. And he has an ace-king. Strong hand.’

  ‘Does he raise?’

  ‘He raises for sure, the question is, how much.’

  ‘He raises one hundred thousand.’

  ‘Everyone folds back to Claire… She has a decision to make, doesn’t she.’

  ‘And she calls.’

  ‘Let’s see the flop… oh my! An ace gives Mikey top pair, but Claire’s found a seven!’

  ‘Look at her face, you wouldn’t know what she’s thinking.’

 

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