You Play the Black ......

         I could remember everything about California, but i couldn't feel it. I tried to get my mind to remember something that i could feel, too, but it was no use. It was all gone. All of it. The pink stucco houses and the palm trees and the stores .....

from

You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up (1938)
featured in

Snappy and Reckless
Woody Haut
LA Review of Books

2011

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/snappy-and-reckless-richard-hallas-you-play-the-black-and-the-red-comes-up/