The Perfect Poker Face

A player who has no "tells."

You can tell, by just looking at the portraits, why they put up the tepee... Could the anchor know something we didn't? Could he read our horoscope in the Tarot of face cards we slept with every night? No. Even the anchor of the major network can't know the "why" of the big game, but he can bluff with the best of them. The simulacrum has mastered the bluff but not the game. The shuffle is not enough if the deck is marked by the mapmakers. Theater demands a new deck (which is the same as the antique deck), and the territory is wild again, a Tarot of past, present and future. A few blocks south of The Hill, a controversy is developing about the old Negro Burial Ground accidentally unearthed. Teachers and church pastors are regularly appearing now on The Hill with groups of high school kids. Mr. Lee's hut and the tepee with its portraits are the main attraction of the tours. Gabriele has assigned herself the task of giving the history lesson.

12/27/90 Nick photocopied something from the library
yesterday. The only evidence of an Indian village in southern Manhattan was found right here
where The Hill is now. Shell banks were found down on Pearl Street, for example. In the
1600's, there used to be a freshwater pond called Collect Pond, whose perimeter was the
present day Canal, Bowery, Centre and Elm Streets. Its one bank was a hilly area. The
Dutch settlers called the area as well as the Indians and their chief

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The anchor visits with, I guess, Roone Arledge. "Nick, I'd like you to meet my boss." I'm supposed to know his name, but I don't and he doesn't offer it when we shake hands. "Nice to meet you, Boss. My friends call me Chief." We have a little laugh and both look over at the anchor. His blush is real.

All blushes are real. They are the most obvious "tell" at a poker table. Actors can't blush on film. The camera can't make real such subtlety. When the actor blushes, know, that like when it occurs in life, he has forgotten his lines. The illusion is gone, and the true script has arrived.

Theater is that blush. It pulls anchor. The anchored ship is both simulacrum and reality. Unfettered, it drifts and becomes theater, its true self.