ST4.03 | "888 Seafood Buffet"

APRIL 2026
DOUBLE DOWN AND THEN DO IT AGAIN
Just because anyone can open a DraftKings account or can go rolling the dice at a local casino doesn’t mean gambling has gone legit. This month, we’re looking for stories from the real gamblers, the people who put it all on the line, and lost (or won) big, and the effects on those around them. Make it dirty. Make it seedy. Remind everyone what it can mean to lose it all. 

888 SEAFOOD BUFFET

by Bruce Thierry Cheung

Two grand at eleven and you can feel it in your teeth, the woman two seats over smells like gardenias and is losing worse than you, thirty-eight hundred at midnight, forty-six by twelve thirty, you are up six thousand dollars at one in the morning and nothing has ever felt like this, not the wedding, not when Kevin was born, not the recovery room with Linda asleep and you holding him skin-to-skin shaking so hard the nurse asked if you were okay and you said yes, the first lie you ever told him, and then the king doesn’t come, and the next hand is wrong and the hand after that is wrong and by one-thirty you are giving it back, all of it, the six and then the four and then the two and then the two you came with and by two you are on the 605 doing ninety-five with both windows down and the cold air is the only honest thing left and your phone is going and you don’t look because it’s Uncle Skinny and Uncle Skinny only calls this late when he owes you nothing and you owe him everything and you can’t hear it yet.

***

At 7:43 Kevin climbs onto his chest, eating an Oreo, crumbs falling on Duc’s face. One lands in his open mouth. He tastes it before he opens his eyes. That’s how he knows it’s morning.

“McDonald’s?”

“We’re going somewhere better.”

“How come somewhere better is always far.”

“It’s not far. Get your shoes.”

“I don’t have shoes here.”

“Where are your shoes?”

“It’s your house, Dad.”

“Wear the flip-flops.”

“They’re too big.”

“Kevin. Flip-flops. Let’s go.”

He carries Kevin to the car. Kevin is too old and too heavy to be carried and they both know it and neither says so. Kevin hooks his legs around his father’s waist and puts his chin on Duc’s shoulder and lets himself be carried. Duc licks his thumb and wipes Oreo off Kevin’s cheek.

“Don’t do the thumb thing.”

“Hold still.”

“It’s gross, Dad.”

The Corolla has a parking ticket on the windshield from last night. Duc pulls it off, opens the glove box, and slides it onto the stack of others.

“It smells in here.”

“Roll down the window.”

“It still smells.”

Kevin touches the dollar coin in his pocket. Emergency money, Duc said two years ago. Keep it on you always. Kevin reaches into his backpack and straightens the DS cartridges. Lines them up. Duc watches in the rearview mirror and looks away.

Duc’s lips move. No sound. Mouths “I’ll have it by Thursday” and then shakes his head and mouths “Wednesday, I’ll have it by Wednesday” and then his lips move faster and his hand comes up and points at nobody and his mouth says “that’s not what I said” and then he stops and grips the wheel. He feels Kevin watching from the passenger seat the whole time.

The phone lights up. A text from Uncle Skinny.

you said tuesday bro it’s tuesday.

The 888 Seafood Buffet on Garvey opens at ten. Duc has been asked not to return to the one on Valley. Golden Unicorn on Las Tunas has his photograph laminated behind the register. This one is fresh. This one doesn’t know him yet.

Eighteen ninety-nine each. Forty-two dollars in his pocket. He pulls out the bills. The smell of cash is the same at the register as it is at the felt. His fingers know the difference between a twenty and a ten without looking. His hands shake. Kevin sees it. Kevin holds up two fingers at the host stand. Two please.

They sit at the back table by the window. Duc leans forward.

“Okay. What do we eat?”

“Sushi first.”

“Sushi first. Why?”

“Best value.”

“Good. What do we skip?”

“French fries.”

“And nuggets.”

“Don’t drink anything.”

“Liquids are a—”

“Trap.”

“Good.”

“Can I go now?”

“Go.”

Duc watches Kevin cross the restaurant in the too-big flip-flops, slap of rubber on tile. Left. Left. Pause at the salmon.

Duc does a full lap before touching anything. Crab legs too small. Kalbi fresh, tongs not turned yet, tray just came out. Sashimi better at the far end where the ice is thicker.

Back at the table Kevin is already eating. Duc cracks the crab leg. Kevin leans forward to watch the shell split. Duc hands him the meat. Kevin eats it with his fingers and wipes them on Duc’s sleeve without asking.

Kevin smells the salmon before he eats it. Says “hey little guy” under his breath. Then eats. Linda used to smell her food like that. Duc watches him do it and for a second, he can see Kevin at four with a chicken nugget and Kevin at two with a Cheerio held in his whole fist and then it’s just Kevin at eight again, eating salmon.

“Dad something’s wrong with my eye.”

“You got wasabi in your eye.”

Duc wets a napkin and presses it gently against Kevin’s eye. Kevin holds Duc’s wrist with both hands. They stay like that.

“Did you know salmon swim upstream?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?”

“To get home.”

Kevin comes back from the buffet with a full plate of curly fries.

“Kevin?”

“What?”

“What is that?”

“Fries.”

“We talked about this.”

“I like fries.”

“If you eat it, they win. Fries cost them nothing. You know what sashimi costs them? You know what lobster tails cost them? We are here to take what costs them the most. That is the whole game. That is the entire—Kevin are you listening to me?”

“They’re really good.”

Kevin eats a fry slowly while looking at him. Duc opens his mouth. Closes it.

“You want one?”

Duc takes the fry. He eats it.

Forty-two dollars minus this breakfast minus the parking tickets minus the check engine light minus the broken windshield and Linda’s new address which has a doorman, and Uncle Skinny’s two thousand which he does not have, which he was supposed to have by today, which he lost trying to get, and he knows three different ways to get two thousand if he—

He bites the inside of his cheek. Copper. He’s been chewing the same spot for years.

His phone buzzes on the table.

“Uncle Skinny,” Kevin says, without looking up.

“How do you know it’s Uncle Skinny?”

“It’s always Uncle Skinny.”

Duc circles the buffet again. The salmon is running low. Someone at the next table is wearing perfume that smells like gardenias. He turns. Nobody is there.

And the roast duck.

He stops. Lacquered skin, amber and tight. Fat rendered so clean the meat is going soft in that way you can see from three feet away if you know what to look at. Duc knows what to look at. He has known since he was Kevin’s age and his mother made duck in a kitchen the size of this table and the skin came out like this. He plates it fast. Back at the table he eats slowly. He is right about the duck.

He reaches under the chair and pulls out Kevin’s backpack. Napkins line the bottom. Ziploc bags already open.

Kevin did this.

Kevin keeps eating salmon and doesn’t look up.

Duc puts the backpack on his lap under the table. Opens the Ziploc with one hand. Picks up a piece of duck with the other hand, the chopsticks, casual, like he’s still eating. Lowers it into the bag. The grease soaks through the napkin immediately. He doesn’t care. Second piece. He uses his body to block the angle from the kitchen. Third piece, and he can feel the bag getting heavy and warm on his thighs. Fourth piece, all fat, the white shine under the crispy skin, and the Ziploc won’t close because the skin is sticking out and he pushes it down with his thumb and his thumb goes through the skin and grease runs down his wrist into his sleeve. Fifth. Sixth.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Duc licks the grease off his thumb and pats Kevin’s head. He goes back for more duck. The waiter is already watching. When Duc returns the waiter follows him.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“The bag, sir.”

“What bag?”

“In the backpack.”

“That’s my son’s backpack.”

“There is duck in the backpack.”

“No.”

Like a parent answering a teacher.

“Sir, you cannot take food from the—”

“I’m not taking food.”

“Sir, I can see the bag.”

“My son,” Duc says, his hand going to his chin, “has a thing, a dietary thing, his doctor said he needs—”

“Thirty dollars per pound for takeout.”

Silence.

“I’ll put it back.”

He walks to the duck station and empties the bag onto the tray.

“Sir—sir, what are you—”

“You said put it back.”

“Sir, you cannot put that back, that’s been in a—sir, I need you to step away from the station.”

“It’s clean.”

“Sir, I need you to come with me.”

“I’m a paying customer.”

“Sir, I saw you take it.”

“I’m a paying customer. I paid for this meal.”

“Sir you tried to steal—”

“Don’t.”

Quiet.

“Don’t say that word in front of my kid.”

The waiter looks at Kevin. Looks back at Duc.

Duc flips the duck tray.

Tray, heat lamp, serving tongs, all of it off the station and onto the floor. Duck everywhere. Lacquered pieces sliding across the linoleum.

Someone’s phone is up.

“I said don’t call me that.”

“Sir—”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Sir you need to—”

“I’m a paying customer. I paid. My son paid.”

A woman at the next table pulls her kid’s chair back. A busboy in the doorway holds an empty tray and doesn’t move. The old man two tables over keeps eating.

Duc grabs the backpack off the table. The waiter grabs it back.

“That’s my son’s backpack.”

“Sir—”

“His DS is in there.”

They are pulling the backpack. Neither of them is winning. A quarter falls out.

The kitchen door swings open and a woman comes through carrying a full tray of orange chicken with both hands, moving fast, and the tray catches Duc’s elbow and the orange chicken goes up and comes down on Duc and the waiter and the woman and the floor and Duc Truong is standing in the 888 Seafood Buffet covered in orange chicken and duck grease with a Ziploc bag in one hand and his son’s backpack in the other.

A piece of duck lies on the floor. The skin is fatty and perfect.

He bends down and eats it.

The waiter watches him eat it.

Kevin watches him eat it.

The manager comes from the back. “I’m calling the police.”

“We paid,” Duc says.

Duc reaches into his pocket. Three dollars and change. Everything. He throws it. Bills and coins across the floor, a quarter spinning under a chair.

“Keep it,” Duc says.

Kevin is already at the door. Backpack on. He picked it up off the floor when nobody was watching.

They walk to the car. Duc doesn’t carry him this time. Kevin walks fast in the too-big flip-flops, slap slap slap across the parking lot, not looking back. In the car Kevin’s backpack sits half open on the back seat. Inside are a change of clothes, his DS, and a bag of gummy worms pushed to the bottom.

The phone lights up again.

Kevin watches his father’s hands on the wheel. Duc makes a sound through his nose. He covers his mouth. Clears his throat.

“I almost won,” Duc says.

“You always almost win.”

Duc sees Kevin touch the dollar coin in his pocket and he knows his son will keep it for twenty years through two apartments and a marriage and a son of his own and he will not be able to explain why and he will not throw it away.

Duc pulls out onto Garvey.

Kevin closes his eyes. Slows his breathing. Goes limp in the seat.

They sit at the red light.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we going home?”

The light stays red a long time.

The phone buzzes.

The phone buzzes.

He doesn’t look.

He doesn’t look.

He doesn’t look yet.

BRUCE THIERRY CHEUNG (on Instagram @boocethierry) is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. His debut feature film, Don’t Come Back from the Moon, was a New York Times Critics’ Pick. His fiction is forthcoming in 34 Orchard. Connect with Bruce on www.brucethierry.com.