She wanted him to stop gambling, but he couldn’t. It was how he thought about the world. Gambling was a series of questions: Am I lucky? Am I favored? Am I unlike other men? Will I die alone? Am I loved? Am I respected? The answers to these questions came at once, and with great certainty. Then the certainty evanesced. That was the good news. You got to ask again. Only the wilderness could cure him, where there was no other
