Ocean's Fourteen

The duffel bag falls to my floor. I unzip every pouch. The stacks start pouring out. Turning the bag over onto my bed I realize the extent of my yield. I toss my jacket and fedora perfectly onto my conveniently placed hat and coat rack. My suspenders fall to my sides and I leap into my bed. I’m rich.We swagger into to the Phelps Science center, my boys and I: Holden the sly, Max the boisterous, Tibbypoo the enforcer. Soule is coming back with a vengeance. The wind blows back our hair saucily, all of us looking classy in our sport coats. We flash our IDs at the door to get in--fakes, of course, because we’re that bad. We split up, attending to our respective jobs.I head for the craps table, Tibbets for blackjack, Max-- well, for the ladies. Holden slinks around, incognito, trying to jack small bills wherever he can. We walk in with only a few Pavuluris to our name, a Weitzman or two, maybe. But we’re hardcore, so of course we trade it all for chips. The red solo cups we each receive are filled only about a quarter of the way up. Go Time.First game of craps, I bet it all. The dice roll and come up with a five. I read a tutorial online five minutes ago, I don’t even know what that means but the ‘stickman’ (I know my vocab) stacks chip after chip after chip and pushes it toward me. I smirk a devilish grin and push the chips back out. All in.Everyone at the table gasps simultaneously.“Ball me, Blazer,” I say to the stickman. Bringing my hand to my mouth, I kiss each die for good luck.I toss the dice. A single manly tear rolls down my cheek as the red cubes bounce around the table like rubies. The crowd goes silent. You could hear a tie clip drop. The dice stop and the stickman reads them-- seven. I cheer, a roar really, like a lion, assuming my roll was the most unlikely, most ludicrously impressive roll of all craps history. Apparently, it was not. The stick man reaches for my chips and pulls all of them in. A little more than a few manly tears flow from my eyes. Meanwhile, Max and Tibbetts make their move.As my apocalyptic dice fall, Max flips the blackjack table and starts pulling the useless “Soule Bucks” from his blazer pocket. In a flurry of fresh cut paper and misguided rage, Max rips his pants off to reveal a bikini-- the perfect distraction. Tibbetts is already on the move to add to the diversion. A wave of Abbot seniors close on Max, struggling to take him down. Our card counting montage and Ocean’s trilogy marathon had failed us-- it was all falling through. Holden was stuffing his pockets with Abbot money, not as slyly as we had practiced, getting noticed by literally every pair of eyes in Grainger.We meet outside, having been “escorted from the event”. With red and black eyes fresh with manly tears and punches, we begin our trek to the Soule common room, or “mission control.” As we ponder what could have possibly gone wrong, a mysterious figure all in black appeared. Francis Lee, in a fly tuxedo, points his cane at us with a black duffel hanging off of the end. “Your cut,” he says.