I came to possess the laptop containing the voluminous writings of Max Fiddleman on November 22 of last year, the night he was struck by a 1992 Chevrolet Lumina outside of the Pacific Breeze Casino in Ocenaside California. He stepped in front of the vehicle as he took a short break from a no limit hold’em game card game, in the poker room he had made his second home for the better part of ten years.
The car was moving slowly, as an eyewitness I was surprised quite honestly that there was the requisite force to knock Max to the ground, but this is what happened. I am not the credulous sort, so if some self-pitying debauchee had told me his car “lurched” I would be, to put it mildly, rather skeptical. But I am a skeptic no more. My sedan lurched and struck Max, and on my dying day I will still hold a ripe, naked contempt for American engineering.
Months later, after I received my 47 million dollar settlement from a Las Vegas casino (A Venetian croupier with a twitchy simian paw had ruined a hot shoot at the craps table. During the ensuing argument I accidentally bit his wrist and Ape Paw lifted me up and slammed me violently to the ground. The man, an amateur bodybuilder from Slovakia, had in addition to inflicting permanent nerve damage, ensured I have crippling nightmares, as my testimony made clear, i.e. pain and suffering) I went car shopping and was adamant with the Bugatti salesman that I was not going to even sit in the champagne colored Chiron until he could assure me that it was a “lurchless” conveyance. But I digress.
Max had hit his head on the pavement. He appeared to be more stunned than hurt. His gait was unsteady but he returned to the poker table and played for ten minutes before collapsing to the ground. Minutes later the ambulance arrived and the EMT trio quickly got him to the hospital. A bleeding brain can be lethal (I Googled it) but the skilled physicians at the Tri-City Medical Center managed to save his life with a medically induced coma. Blessedly, tragedy averted.
When the ambulance arrived I had taken Max’s backpack and placed it in the trunk of my car (undamaged front bumper btw). I didn’t want a desperate gambler to grab the bag and run during the chaos and confusion. Several days after the accident I first opened the bag, principally to remove any rotten sundries. (Max was munching on a fuji apple when my car struck him). Inside the bag I found mostly what I would expect to find in the possession of a poker player accustomed to spending long hours working the tables: headphones, phone charger, gum, bear mace, travel sized deodorant, toothbrush with a small bottle of Crest, a well worn copy of The Trial, $7200 in cash…and, in this instance, a laptop computer. Within twenty minutes of reading the pages of what Max called The Last Grinder I knew I would make it my mission to publish his writing. I quickly determined a great deal of editing would be required.
I’m not a professional editor but my sense of the duty of an editor was to search for the truth. This leads me to not infrequently (having no choice) offer my commentary on my friend Max’s stories. Am I omniscient? Well, the short answer would be yes. My newfound wealth offered me the time to fully commit to this project, including the arduous task of hunting down some of the people Max discusses. Moreover, in working to bring my dear friend’s writings to the public I stumbled across what I suspect, in the very near future, will be considered one of the greatest discoveries in the history of neurological science. Remarkably, I was able to communicate with Max in his temporary slumber with a simple tool. I discovered I could get him to answer questions with the gentle poke of a small phillips head screwdriver. I would first ask Max a yes or no question and then immediately give him a painless, nursely jab in the gut with “Rusty”, as I came to call the tool. If he made a noise, a barely audible grunt, he was saying “no.” Silence meant “yes.” This is how I know my good friend will soon be uncomatose, he is remarkably communicative for someone who can neither speak nor move. And how do I know he approves of my publishing what I call The Fiddleman Chronicles? His stony silence told me so. You are welcome dear friend. I speak for scores of poker players when I say we look forward to your return to the poker tables.
Sincerely
Professor Schifferdo Moonpuppet