Choices, part 20

by john | Jun 18, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen

“Where did you learn to play poker?” Cain asked.

“Now, big brother, don’t worry. I can teach you if you want. Daddy, where did you pick me and Mama up?”

“Texas.”

“And what’s the name of the game we’re playing?”

“Texas Hold’em.”

“Now doesn’t it stand to reason that a girl who grew up in Texas, and happened to have been raised next to a bar, might have learned a little about poker?” She kept up the sweetness and light demeanor, which I think made it all the worse.

“So how much do you have?” I finally asked.

“About sixteen hundred dollars. The three hundred you gave me was seed money, and as soon as I could double that, I took a seat in a juicy 2/5 game. I’m gonna pick up another decent pot or two and then hit up the Pot Limit Omaha game they’ve got over in the back corner. It’s an uncapped game and the three seat’s throwing money away like a Catholic priest on a Bangkok bender, while the seven seat has had about seventeen Crown and Cokes and is falling asleep between hands. As long as I stay out of the way of the four and six seats, I should be okay. I can’t tell if they’re playing partners or just locals that don’t see any need to tangle with each other, but either way they aren’t the soft spots at the table. I’ll avoid them unless I’ve got the mortal nuts, and I figure they’ll take a shot or two at me because I’m a girl and then they’ll go back to the easy pickings themselves.” Her whole body language changed when she went on this description of the table. It was like a general talking about an opposing army’s strengths and weaknesses. And never once did she look back at the table to make sure she was talking about the right people. It was, to put it mildly, the damndest thing I’d ever seen.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand a damn word you said, Baby Sister, and I’m real sure I can’t afford any poker lessons from you.” Cain said with more than a little awe in his voice.

“Well, are you about ready to roll? We’ve got about two grand between us now, and that’s enough to make some headway before we need to reload our funds. We might even have enough to get us all the way through this mess, wherever that is.” I was not very comfortable with some of the looks we were getting. Not that they were threatening looks, more like Emily was a piece of meat, and I get squirrelly where my girl children are concerned.

“Come back in two, two and a half hours. I’m just about done with this table, but it’ll take a couple of good hands at the next to get me where I want to be before we head out. And besides, you never leave while the game is good.” She turned to go back to the table and I grabbed her elbow and pulled her back, hard.

“Where did you hear that phrase?” I asked in a low, very serious tone. All the levity went out of her when she looked up into my eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she actually looked afraid of me. And frankly, I didn’t know better, and she probably was afraid of me. I loosened my grip on her arm but stayed right down in her face. “Who told you that line about never leave when the game is good?”

“A..a guy. He used to come in the diner. He taught me how to play cards. He’d flirt with Mom and play cards with me in one of the booths after school.”

“What was his name?” I kept my voice down but she could see in my eyes that something was going on.

“Luke. Why?”

“Nothing.” I tried to force my face back to normal, but could tell I wasn’t doing a very good job. “Nothing. It’s just that’s a phrase I heard a long time ago, but it’s been years, and I’m sure it’s just part of the vernacular now.” I was lying through my teeth and she knew it, but she could tell that I wasn’t going to come across with any truth right then. “Go on back to your game.”

“Are you sure? You wanna tell me what’s got you so spooked?” She asked. “Besides, now that you’ve got me rattled, I’m gonna have to fold every hand for the next orbit to get my head back in the game.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It’s nothing, really. Go on back to slaying the redneck dragons and we’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“Yeah, go rob the poor unsuspecting swamp rats, Baby Sister. Me and the old man are gonna go grab a bite and play a little more blackjack.” Cain put an arm around my shoulders and steered me towards the buffet. As soon as he saw Emily take her seat again, he whispered fiercely in my ear “Exactly what the hell do you think you were doing?”

We got a booth a little separate from the rest of the buffet and sat. I downed a Coke in one quick gulp and once the waitress was headed off for my refill I leaned forward. “You know who her poker lessons came from?”

“Yeah, the Morningstar.”

“Yeah. Exactly. That son of a bitch has been hanging around my daughter and I want to know why. Wait a minute. That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. How did you know who her ‘Luke’ was?” I leaned back as my son took a moment to figure out the best way to tell his story.

“Remember when I mentioned not liking to sit with my back to a door?” He started.

“Yeah, you said you were in Deadwood when Hickock got shot.”

“Yeah. I was sitting across from him at the table, and probably was about to lose my ass, because my two pair wasn’t as good as his when McCall came in and shot him.”

“What does that have to do with the Morningstar?”

“He was there, too.”

Choices, part 19

by john | Jun 17, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen

The casino in New Orleans is just like most of them, loud, garish and a little depressing. It’s no wonder Lucky feels so at home in them. I wonder what it says about me that I also feel very at home among the dropouts, the degenerates and the hopeless dreamers. But I’ve always like blackjack, and I count cards just well enough to generally make a little money without getting noticed by the floor guys or the eye in the sky. I sat down at a low-limit table and settled in to a nice six-deck shoe. Most people think you can’t count a six-deck shoe, but the reality is that it’s just a little harder. If you’re patient, you can figure it out. If you’re immortal, patience is one thing you’ve got in spades. The kids wandered around the slot machines for while as I got my groove started. I was up about a hundred bucks at a $15 table when Emily came back.

“Gimme a couple hundred bucks.” She said, holding out her hand.

“And why, pray tell, would I want to do that?” I responded without touching either the chips in front of me or the cash in my pocket.

“Because you’re taking too long and I can make us a lot more money a lot more quickly. So gimme $300.”

“How do you plan to make significantly more money than me, faster than me, with half our remaining money?” I was a little concerned. She had an odd look about her, not like she had a gambling bug, but like she knew she had an edge. It worries me when people think they have an edge over a casino, especially one that’s as close to water as that one was. I’ve seen people frantically trying to learn to swim after big winning sessions in casinos, but it can be difficult to learn new things with you hands and feet tied together. I ended up very soggy in that little adventure and didn’t relish an opportunity to repeat it. It’s a lot harder to find thugs in casinos nowadays, since they’re all run my huge multinational conglomerates, but there’s still the occasional neckless twit rolling around, and if I could avoid any interaction with them, I would.

“Poker.” She looked up at me and when I didn’t fork over any cash, she went on. “I’m a good poker player, and I read people very, very well. So give me one buyin and I’ll make us some serious cash. I’ve been watching, and these games are ridiculously juicy. It’s almost like these guys want to give their money away.” Now I’ve played a little poker, and I’ve played once or twice in the Delta, and the boys down there like to gamble. And they would never think that a little girl like Emily could hold her own, so even if she didn’t have a somewhat amazing ability to know what people were thinking and feeling, she’d probably have an edge. Couple that with her mildly disturbing insight, and I did what any right-thinking father would do. I gave her the money.

“Thanks. Now stay here. If you’re there with me it’ll singe my groove.” She walked off, and I saw her tying her hair up in pigtails as she went. Singe her groove? Really?

“They grow up fast, don’t they Poppa?” Cain was in the seat next to me at the table. I hadn’t noticed him there before and wasn’t sure how much of the exchange he’d witnessed.

“Yeah. They sure do. Did you ever have any?” I realized how little I really knew about my son, what with that whole wanting to murder each other for millennia thing getting in the way.

“A few. I had a few early, but they all bore The Mark on their foreheads, so I waited until after the carpenter did his thing to have any more. You know what’s funny? After they killed him, none of my children since had The Mark.
Funny, huh?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought he could have affected us, what with us being so much older than him and all.”

“I know. But it really did seem like something changed after his time. Like Father hit the reset button or something.” I’d never pegged Cain for the philosophical type, but people can change in 5,000 years I guess. We sat there for an hour or two pushing chips back and forth. I wasn’t counting cards much anymore, just chatting with Cain about our lives through the years. Basic blackjack strategy will keep you from getting in too much trouble, and after a while doesn’t really require any thought. I managed to get lucky a few times and pick up a couple hundred dollars when I realized that Emily hadn’t come back for any more money.

“Wanna go check on your sister?” I asked Cain.

“I thought she didn’t want you to singe her groove?” Cain asked with a smirk.

“Really? Out of all the people, do you think I would singe a girl’s groove. C’mon.” I colored up to a purple and a couple of black chips and walked over towards the poker room. Poker room is something of a misnomer, it’s more a slightly enclosed area with a rail around it where addicts can go smoke.

It took a little bit of eyeballing from the rail, but we finally caught sight of Emily, and when we did, Cain and I exchanged what could most charitably be called shocked glances. She was sitting at one end of the table, the only girl in a sea of fat, sweaty men, and she had a wall of chips in front of her that was impressive in its size alone, much less in the fact that it was made up of mostly red and green chips. I made a quick guess and figured she had close to $1500 sitting in front of her. She saw us watching, folded her hand and sashayed over to the rail to give her brother a big hug and me a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey boys, how did you do?” She asked with an altogether impertinent smile.

“We made a little. Looks like you hit a nice little lucky streak yourself, sweetheart.” I replied cautiously. I wanted to know what she was up to, but damned if I was going to give her the satisfaction of asking.

“I’ve had worse days.” She answered with a twinkle in her eye. She knew I wasn’t going to be able to resist asking, and as a matter of fact, I wasn’t.

“Where did you get all that money?” I finally blurted out.

“It’s the funniest thing, Daddy. When you have the best hand, they give you all the chips in the middle of the table. And if you put all your chips in the middle, and you have the best hand, you don’t just get your chips back, you get everybody else’s chips too! Isn’t that fun!” She even squealed a little at the end. I felt ill.

Choices, Part 18

by john | Jun 16, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen

It was noon by the time we got to the police station, and the desk sergeant was glad to see us. Or more to the point, he was glad to see anyone that would agree to take Eve off their hands. We paid her fine, collected her belongings, including that ridiculously large bag, and waited on the sidewalk for her. It took about twenty minutes, but finally she tromped down the steps, grabbed her bag from Cain, and started walking off down the street. “Thanks for the bail money, kiddo.” She tossed over her left shoulder without breaking stride.

We caught up to her after about a dozen paces, and I blocked her path on the sidewalk. She stepped around me into the street, and kept on going. After a few fruitless attempts to stop her, I stopped and said “Go ahead. Keep running, Eve. But no matter where you go, there you are. And you can’t outrun you, no matter how far you go.” She stopped, and her head dropped. She slowly turned, and walked back to me.

She got right up in my face and said, in a voice dripping with chill, “Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck your archangel, fuck your new kid, fuck your latest love story, fuck your Choice, fuck living forever, fuck the rest of humanity, if that’s even what we are anymore, and fuck the Father.”

I didn’t know my hand had moved until her head rocked back with the force of me slapping her. She raised her hand to retaliate and I caught her wrist. I leaned in a got close enough that I could feel her breath on my face and I said in a low voice “You can say whatever you want about me, you can even talk shit about Myra and Emily. They can take care of themselves. But you will not disrespect our Father in my presence. No matter how you may feel about the mess we got ourselves into, no matter how much help we may have had from that douchebag angel, he is still our Father, our Creator, and he deserves your respect. “ I kept right on going without giving her a minute to get a word in.

“Now get your head out of your ass for a minute. There is something going on here that is bigger than both of us. I don’t understand it completely, and I’m not going to pretend for a minute that I trust Michael, but right now, we need him. I’ve got a real bad feeling about whatever this Choice is, and if we’re gonna get through this, I need people with me that I can count on. And you’ve always been at the top of that list. No matter what’s happened over the years, I know deep down you still care about me, and I will always, always care about you. And that’s the kind of backup we need.”

She stood there for a long moment before she looked up at me, nodded, then said to Cain “I’m gonna head back to my place to pick up some things, and some different clothes. I can catch a cab back to your place, or you can wait for me while I pack. I can call in to work and tell them I’m quitting. They won’t miss me, always said I was high maintenance.”

“You? Can’t imagine.” I said, grinning at her. She punched me lightly on the arm and said “I’ll see you back at Cain’s. And tell the floozy I’m sorry I was a bitch.”

“I’ll pass the word.” She walked off up the street and I turned back to the others.

“Do you think she’ll show?” Cain asked.

“Yes.” Emily didn’t have the slightest hesitation in her voice, and I had learned to trust her when she used that tone. So I nodded to Cain and we headed back to his apartment.

As we walked, Cain looked over at me and asked “How are you set for cash, Dad?”

“I’ve got about six hundred on me. Why?” I replied.

“Because all my ready cash just went to pay off a drunk and disorderly charge on Mommie Dearest, and since I share your distaste for traditional financial institutions, I have a modicum of concern as to how we’re going to finance our little world-saving endeavor.”

“Hmm. That’s a good point. Em, I don’t suppose your mother won the lottery since I skipped town, did she?”

“Yeah, of course she did. That’s why we were both waiting tables. To keep it real.” She made some type of odd gangster hand signal, then laughed at the confused look on my face.

“So how much money do we have, then?” I asked her.

“Well, there’s your six hundred, plus about four hundred between mom and me, and Cain’s now broke, so that just leaves anything Michael and Eve have.”

“Since Michael has been an incorporeal ball of self-righteous energy for most of his life, I’m guessing there’s not much earning potential on his resume. So that leaves Eve. And that means we’re screwed.” I answered.

“What makes you say that?” Emily asked.

“Mom doesn’t believe in money. She keeps only the bare minimum to support herself and gives the rest away, usually to the most deplorable people she can find. She might have fifty bucks on her, and that would be from last night’s lap dances. There’s not going to be much in the rainy day fund at Casa Eve.” Cain answered.

“Alright then, I guess it’s time to make money the old-fashioned way.” I declared.

“Bash people in the head with a rock and take it from their still-warm corpses?” Cain asked.

“Tacky, son. Really, really tacky.” I glared at him.

“Sorry, Poppa, old habits die hard. So if larceny and skullduggery wasn’t what you had in mind, how exactly do you plan to fund the next leg of our road trip?” He asked.

“The same way I’ve supported myself for the past twenty years. Blackjack. Come on kiddies, Poppa’s gonna take you to the casino. If you’re real nice, I’ll give you twenty bucks to play the slots with.” I headed down to Canal Street and turned left towards the casino, my two children in tow. I looked back at Emily “By the way, did you bring ID?”

“Yes, Dad.” She sighed in the tone that twenty-something girls have used with their ridiculous fathers ever since I first had a twenty-something daughter.