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about you, but if I won a case with the DNA against me and then my car blew up with someone else inside, I’d figure it was my lucky day.”
    Scrbacek looked at Chris for a moment and then down at the sign on the table. Twenty-five-dollar minimum. He thought a moment more before taking his wallet from his pants, pulling out what he had—six twenties, a five, two ones—and dropping it on the table.
    Chris spread the bills out before him and said loudly, “Change one hundred twenty-seven.”
    Scrbacek stood behind the open seat as Chris jammed the bills down the cash slot and gave him five green chips and two white.
    “Good luck,” said Chris.
    Scrbacek bet a green chip and pulled a three and an eight. Chris showed six. Without a word Scrbacek placed a second green chip beside the first and Chris slipped Scrbacek’s third card beneath his others, facedown. When the deal came back to him, Chris pulled out his bottom card, a jack, dealt a nine on top, and just like that Scrbacek was up fifty bucks.
    “Maybe you’re right,” said Scrbacek. He took off his raincoat, hung it over the chair, and sat. He pulled two greens back into his stack, leaving two for the next hand.
    What followed was uncanny. Whenever he stayed pat with a twelve or thirteen, Chris would bust. Whenever he squinted and took a hit, the right card, like magic, flipped atop his others. With a hand of fifteen, he pulled an ace and a five; with a hand of fourteen he pulled a seven; twice when Chris had a twenty, Scrbacek pounded his hand into a twenty-one. And the pile of greens he placed before him grew until they turned to blacks, and then they grew some more.
    He toked Chris a few chips every couple of hands, first the greens then the blacks, and when Chris was replaced by a woman named Thuy, he tipped her, too, because toking kept the luck moving through him, and it was moving through him like a current. The cocktail waitress brought him a stream of scotches on the rocks and another pack of cigarettes after he ran through his first, supplying as he was not only his own vile habit but the vile habit of the guy sitting next to him, who was cheerily bumming Marlboros even as his losses mounted. Scrbacek drank and smoked and tried to keep his hands steady as he placed his chips before him and signaled his plays. He won with a fourteen when Thuy pulled an eight to her six-jack. She placed three black chips in front of him as he turned his head to the left just in time to spot another cocktail waitress coming toward him, her round tray full of gold-rimmed glasses.
    She had long thin legs, breasts bursting out of her top, black hair falling in waves around her pretty face. She smiled at Scrbacek, and he smiled back and took a long, satisfied drag of his cigarette.
    “When did you get in?” said Dolores.
    “A few thousand dollars ago.”
    “Up or down?”
    “Up.”
    “Good for you.”
    “Farther up since you showed.”
    “How sweet.”
    She searched the glasses in her tray and pulled out a scotch on the rocks. “I’m working craps, but the guy this is for only tips when he’s winning, and the tables have been ice all night.”
    “Not this one,” he said before sucking down a long draw of the scotch.
    “I heard you were having quite a day. You want to celebrate tonight?”
    “That’s why I came. Do you have the kid?”
    “She’s with her father.”
    “That’s good. That’s great. When do you get off?”
    “It’s your play.”
    Scrbacek turned back to the table. He was showing an ace-five. The dealer had a jack. He took a card, another five, and nodded, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
    “I can get there by two,” said Dolores.
    “I’ll be waiting.”
    “Good,” she said, and then she leaned in close to whisper. “But J.D., don’t climb up to your loft before I get there. Pretend I’m worth waiting up for.”
    Before he could answer, she sashayed off.
    He watched as she carried her tray away, the twitch of her rear in