Lay the Favorite by Beth Raymer Page A

minus three …”
    By lunchtime we were up thirty-three grand.
    After a frenzied four-hour shift, we drove to the Red Rock country club to watch the afternoon games at a friend of Dink’s who was also a professional gambler. Along a brick driveway lined with Corvettes, Jaguars, and luxury SUVs, Dink parked his Altima. We walked beneath an outdoor chandelier, through a marble-floored foyer, up a wrought-iron spiral staircase, and onto the second floor, which overlooked the eighteen-hole Arnold Palmer–designed golf course. Opened French doors led to the friend’s office, commonly known as the Den of Equity.
    Ten middle-aged men of all moods, sizes, and smells fraternized around the den, fiddling with their sports tickers and talking shop.
    “You guys are gonna think I’m full of shit,” said a man with hair plugs, who seemed to be at the center of conversation. “But I met this girl. Redhead. Big tits, no kids …”
    With just a few exceptions, these men had known each other since they were in their twenties. In New York, they had played in the same card rooms and were regulars at the track. They remembered each other’s first cars and first wives. They had watched each other go to prison for tax evasion, bookmaking, and race fixing. They’d seen each other flush at the final table at the World Series of Poker and so broke that they couldn’t pay their electric bill. Through the years, they had bet each other thousands of dollars on things as meaningless as whether or not the winner of the spelling bee would be wearing glasses and as consequential as the results of their prostate exams. When they felt that one gambler was in over his head with a girl who was spending fourteen thousand dollars a pop on pocketbooks, they held a gold-digger intervention.
    Michael, the Den of Equity’s host, was a short, grumpy old man who looked like he’d just downed a glass of curdled milk. He was reputed to be a ruthless bettor, but he couldn’t manage to turn on any of his state-of-the-art appliances. He hired assistants to teach him how to use the mouse on his computer. When he couldn’t find the TV’s volume button, he asked friends to come over and help. His office, however, was so spectacular—the gambling books in the mahogany bookshelves, the valuable Brooklyn Dodgers paraphernalia, the four flat-screen televisions built into the wall cabinet—that the friends and assistants never left. Thus, the Den of Equity became the game-day hangout and Dink saw it as a great place to introduce me to his friends.
    “Everyone!” Dink said, hoisting up his shorts. “Meet Beth, the newest Dink Inc. employee and Flip It aficionado.”
    Falafel, an Israeli backgammon player, was the only one to say hello.
    Noticing that the host was looking at me, I smiled.
    “What?”
he snapped.
    Dink and I sat on a couch in the corner. “Your friends don’t like me,” I whispered over the noisy televisions.
    “They like you,” Dink said, loudly. I shushed him.
    “They like you,” he whispered. “But they barely tolerate women. I guess I kind of forgot that.”
    Beautiful day in Wisconsin, the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens against the Green Bay Packers. Hello everyone, what a great matchup we have for you today
.
    With no interest in the games, and feeling unwelcome, I stayed at Dink’s side and opened my mouth only to eat chocolate-covered strawberries when they came my way. When it came to sports, I enjoyed baseball the most and I had my favorite players—Pedro Martinez and Vladimir Guerrero. Before I met Dink, I had never watched a hockey game; now that I was beginning to understand the rules and becoming familiar with the players, I found the sport exciting. But I loathed football, an animosity that brewed at Florida State, where I had had classes with some of the players. During lectures, they’d blast their Walkmans and rap to themselves while popping zits on their shoulders. When I was a little girl, I always