Paris: Part II

I wake and check my watch: 8PM. Crap! I have to check out of this hotel by 11AM, my sleeping schedule’s off, and I’ve done exactly squat about making a train reservation for Amsterdam. What’s more, I don’t have as much time to go beat up on French fish at the ACF (that’s the Aviation Club, for any newcomers). Or do I?

First stop: train station, to book something. Closed until 6 AM. Godspit! What the hell is going on in this city? Alright, maybe I’ll just play poker for ten hours and hope my freshly battered bankroll holds out all night. On second thought I’d either kill myself or start shitting baguettes if I spent that kind of stretch in that smug stuffy attic. Best to jerk around Notre Dame first and shave off as much inert live poker time gristle as possible.

The pedestrian square before Notre Dame cathedral lays naked and open to chill gusts from every direction, especially those speeding over the nearby Seine. I shiver uncontrollably just trying to get my camera out to snap a few mediocre nighttime shots of the gargoyles and buttresses and whatnot. Time to get the hell out of here.

The ACF staff performs the routine fingerprint scan, plops me in an encouraging 5/5 Euro No Limit game, and hits me up for a 15 Euro meal all at dizzying speed. But I must wait an hour for the sandwich and Orangina. I start out playing fairly tight, feeling out the table and chowing down. But as tends to be the case, I slowly start running over everyone. They don’t like it. Even the dealers don’t like it because with the incredibly high rake, I’ve turned into a very stingy tipper. Then they find out I’m American, and really don’t like it. At some point or another every single person in the game (save a laid back guy next to me) complains about my play or whispers to a neighbor while pointing at me. Ha.

On top of all that, throughout the night a peculiar theme of play emerges that makes me look like a lucky bastard. I often find myself value betting extremely thin only to be way behind versus opponents who are slowplaying huge hands; nevertheless, I hit my two to six outs every single time and take their monies.

But the fun continues. I raise KsTs and get six callers. Flop: 987, two spades. I bet and four people happen to go all in by the time it gets back to me. Of course I get my money in and hit the flush on the turn. Everyone’s drawing dead. The self-appointed leader of the ACF BToye Hate Committee (meaning the guy who let me stack him the most times) explodes in flurries of French moaning and yelling, attracting the whole room’s attention. Even his dearest undersecretary notifies him that I had draws to a straight and flush (Couleur?). I point at my cards, saying, “Yep. Couleur.” And draw a laugh from my new friend next to me.

For my last trick of the night, I kind of limp-trap a guy with A8. He had kept abusing his straddle with terrible overbets, so I just wait for him to put a third of his stack in preflop with queen hi and then force him to sheepishly part with the rest of it. He is baffled when the hands are turned over. From there I lose some small pots, double up a short stack, and move to a table with better players who can actually put me in some tough spots. It’s not quite 6AM, but I’m satisfied with my redeye session and pick up early. I make back about 80% of what I lost yesterday, but considering the lower stakes and how shallow the game played, I’m virtually ecstatic as I count my big weird Euro notes and shuffle back to the train station.

The teller for international reservations chides me for not booking earlier. She explains today’s trip to Amsterdam, which can be managed in three hours with an early and not too expensive reservation, will take me ten hours. I’m on top of the world after my win, so whatever babe. And she was a babe. Pull me slowly along rolling tracts in novel foreign districts, babe. I accept.

Worst fucking decision of my adult life.

I have less than two hours. I rush to the hotel and jam my pack full of every bulky bulging clump of my mobile existence. It fits! I do the fly-by hotel check out because the clerk and I are tight like that. The metro is a grind. I sweat out the seconds at every stop. Sliding somewhere along the rails a warm affinity for this vast grubby underground creeps up on me. Despite all its dubious exudations through filthy drains and between grimy tiles, despite the constant vetting by Parisians being stylish, nosy, stylish again fucking Parisians; I feel at ease in this place and could spend hours in the jog of the trams, intermittently hassled by jaunty street musicians...

Nearly missed my stop. The station is a miserable rat race. I realize I know nothing about trains. When I finally locate mine about a second before it leaves, there are a million people on the thing and a conductor explains to me in poor English that it’s standing room only as he shoves me through the door. So I stand against a window for the initial two hour leg, tightly packed with others in the same predicament, as all the adrenaline of my morning scurrying trickles out of me.

Cue nausea. Cue late arrivals and sprinting across stations. Cue fractured nonsleep even when I fight for a seat. Cue chest lurching. Cue day from hell.

Then waiting for me at the end of the line is Amsterdam, wet and unhappy. In my state, long since food or free from headache, I cannot make any damn sense out of the tram system and all the help desks are closed. I’ll spare the details, but it takes three goddamned hours, a good part in pouring rain, to find my hostel. I even get removed from one of the trams for being “incompetent”. I swear the cord connecting my brain and spine is about to snap any moment when I finally spot my place. I pay the desk man and hop into bed without dressing it in the complementary sheets. I don’t think I have ever slept better.