The Bad Beat

She hauled her skirt down as far as she could and followed Vince into the poker room. She had worn her most scandalous outfit at his insistence as she readied herself for their dinner date. At Luigi’s she would order the fettuccine alfredo, even though Vince would make some sort of comment. It took her an hour to get her makeup right. Covering the bluish bruise around her right eye required several layers of concealer. Tonight, things would be light and easygoing. Carefree, even.

She stumbled and caught herself on Vince’s arm, cursing her choice of stilettos. The backs of her heels were rubbed raw from her double shift at Lucy’s Diner. Vince had taken most of her measly 72 dollars in tips, promising to make it up to her. She touched her eye gently as her gaze adjusted to the dimly lit room full of poker tables and men in stiff black dealer suits.

Heads turned in her direction, away from giant plasma screens showing football games. It wasn’t just that women were a rarity in places like this. She was used to people looking at her. She had her mother’s thick red hair and her father’s sky blue eyes, the only things she had to thank them for. Her appearance had always been her fortress. People are too shallow to look any further, and she preferred it that way anyway.

The stench of body odor hit her as she approached the table. To her left was a gargantuan man. He wore a wrinkled navy blue blazer over a white t-shirt several sizes too small for him, revealing a hairy pink belly hanging out over his belt. The shirt was stained with something resembling spaghetti sauce. A large stack of poker chips in an array of denominations towered in front of him. He swept a lecherous gawk from her shoes to her breasts as she took her place next to him.

“What’s a little lady like you doing in a place like this?”

Ugh, she thought to herself. Had anything more cliché ever been uttered?

He might be surprised to know she grew up playing poker. Well, not so much playing as hosting a bunch of bad-mannered drunks in her parents’ old bungalow on Horseshoe Road. They preferred Omaha poker to Texas Hold’em. Her daddy let her stay up late if she refreshed their drinks and lit their cigarettes. Sometimes, they tossed her some coins for her piggy bank. She was saving for a bike to escape this godforsaken town, like her own mother had done when she was four.

The much younger guy to her right greeted her with an affable high school jock nod. He wore a distracting pair of reflective Oakley sunglasses and a black hoodie pulled down over his head. His face was further obscured by a gnarly, unkempt beard. The Poker Unabomber, she noted.

She grabbed a 20-dollar bill from her bejeweled purse and laid it on the green felt. A table runner arrived swiftly with a small stack of chips, laying them in front of her.

Feeling more eyes on her, she noticed the old woman at the far end of the table watching her intently. Wearing a brown fur coat and at least six rings on her wrinkled hands, the woman did not fit the surroundings of the poker room, looking like a well-thought-out persona from a Dickens novel. The women reached in her bag and grabbed a beautiful, black notebook. Made from the kind of fine leather that somehow looked more striking with age, she opened it gently and removed an ornate brass pen from its hinge. She scribbled something purposefully and smiled.

What a cast of characters, she thought to herself. Next to the old woman sat a miserable-looking middle-aged man. He had unsuccessfully tried to hide his baldness with mousse and a comb, turning his few remaining hairs into sticky blades of straw. He was topping up his chips with one hundred dollars having just been stacked by the whale in the spaghetti shirt.

The dealer expertly shuffled the deck and distributed two cards to each player. She looked down at her hole cards, a three of spades and a ten of hearts. She folded at her turn and grabbed her phone from her purse, checking the time. How long would Vince be in the back room? He had been ushered away 15 minutes ago to meet with a sketchy-looking biker-type, easily 6’5. The man had a bright red tattoo on his forearm of an ominous snake which wound up into the arm of his shirt and reappeared on his neck.

She could have guessed their dinner plans would be ruined by Vince’s money issues. He had sold her mother’s antique candlesticks to a pawn shop the month before. She had long ago learned not to retaliate when such events occurred. She no longer cared for possessions anyway. She had her looks after all. And one day she might flee to the mountains as she imagined her mother had done all those years ago. A tattered postcard had been taped to her mother’s old vanity mirror on Horseshoe Road, askew among fingerprints and lipstick smudges.

Maligne Lake, Jasper.

A little island with spruce trees floated effortlessly in water so blue it had to be filled with sapphires. There were fewer people up in Canada anyway, she knew. Fewer people who could hurt her.

She sighed and reached down for her cards. Vince would wind up with some injuries tonight, she knew, which didn’t bode well for their dinner date nor her own physical integrity. She was already considering which excuse to use when she called in sick to Lucy’s on Monday.

This time she looked down at a pair of eights. When her turn came, she picked up two white chips and flicked them into the pot. Spaghetti Whale raised to five dollars and when the action came back to her, she called.

“Heads up to the flop.”

The dealer burned the first card and turned three cards face up on the table. “Ace of Clubs, Eight of Hearts, Four of Hearts.”

Nice, she thought. She had flopped three eights. She knew that three of a kind was likely the winning hand, and she pushed her remaining chips toward the middle of the table. She might leave this seedy place with a few extra dollars after all. She would have to give them to Vince, of course. Not that this tiny win would put a dent in whatever debt he was dealing with.

“All in.”

“Call!” Spaghetti Whale snapped immediately. “Pocket Aces. Sorry little lady.”

She looked at the board disheartened, realizing that he had trip aces.

“Well, that’s unlucky.” Poker Unabomber exclaimed, casting an empathetic glance her way.

The old woman was still watching her and scrawling something raptly into her black notebook.

“Two cards to come.” The dealer revealed the turn card. “Eight of Spades.”

She had somehow been shown the only card in the deck that could help her. She had four of a kind!

“Quads, wow!” Spaghetti Whale exclaimed. “Now ain’t this your lucky day ol’ girl.”

All of a sudden, the table was abuzz. Everyone was talking. Players from other tables had started to gather around. Miserable Combover was on his feet.

“We need an ace!”

“Ace - one time! ONE TIME!” Poker Unabomber put his arm on her back and tapped her excitedly. “This could be huge!”

She was confused. She surveyed the growing commotion around the table. Some players in this room were gambling with thousands of dollars. Why did they care so much about a pot with a derisory thirty odd dollars? And why was everyone hoping an ace would come on the river? Why did they want her to lose?

The only person whose composure had not changed was the old woman, still seated with her notebook open and pen bobbing up and down methodically.

The dealer smiled at her kindly. He had grasped by the dumbfounded look on her face that she was in the dark.

“Quiet everyone! Calm down for a second.” The dealer looked at her and continued.

“There is one card to come. The reason that we want an ace on the river is because the hand would qualify for the bad beat jackpot.”

“Dude!” Interrupted Unabomber Poker, looking at her. “It’s when a really really strong hand is beaten by an ever better super strong hand!” She shifted uncomfortably as she realized that he was still touching her back. She also wondered if anyone had called her “dude” since junior high.

The dealer gave Unabomber the side-eye and continued.

“The house takes one dollar out of every pot, which goes toward the bad beat jackpot. To win, four of a kind has to lose to a better hand, such as another four of a kind or a straight flush."

“So”, he paused for effect, “if the ace comes on the river right now, you would win the bad beat jackpot, having lost your hand of quad eights to quad aces.”

She was starting to get it. She wanted to lose this hand. And she could win a lot more than thirty bucks by the sound of it. This was her moment. She knew she looked hot. She smoothed down her hair and stood statuesquely, as though posing for a photo. And while all eyes were on her, none were more intensely so than those of the old woman. What the hell is she writing in that book? As though reading her mind, the old women then seemed to complete her project as she gently placed the pen back in the book’s hinge, and closed its pages with an air of finality.

“Okay. Let’s see that last card then.”

There were seemingly hundreds of people gathered around their table. The televisions had been muted and the pit boss was standing imposingly behind the dealer.

The dealer flipped the last card. An ace.

Things moved quickly after that. Someone put a glass of champagne in her hand. Unabomber slapped her convivially on the back again and Spaghetti Whale smothered her in a disgusting hug. It turns out the jackpot was worth $40,000. She had won half, Spaghetti Whale won a quarter, and the rest of her table-mates split the remainder.

The only thing she had ever won before was the Little Miss Copper Plains Beauty Pageant when she was three. Her mother had outfitted her in a lilac dress and painted her nails to match.

This money would set her and Vince on the right path, she thought. She knew how ridiculous she sounded. Amidst the chaotic celebration continuing around her, she noticed the black notebook sitting in front of her on the table. Without thinking, she opened it to the marked page. She gasped, dropping her champagne flute on the poker table, spilling its contents across the valuable card hand.

On the page, the old woman had drawn her. But no, it could not be her, could it? It was a jarring, ugly sketch; a shadowy shell of a human. A discordant figure with bruises, sunken eyes, and darkness around her heart. But it was. Distinctively her.

Abruptly, the pit boss was standing next to her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You need to pick up your husband ‘round back. He’s in rough shape and I can’t let my customers see him. You’ll need this.”

He handed her two large yellow envelopes that she presumed were filled with twenty thousand dollars in cash. She scanned the room desperately for the old woman who was nowhere to be found. When she looked down, the black notebook had disappeared as well.

She took a deep breath. With the heavy envelopes in tow, she headed for the door. She jumped in Vince’s car and exited toward the interstate. And in order to avoid her second bad beat of the night, she decided to head North.