Living Time: A Poker Boy story Read online

  Living Time

  A Poker Boy Story

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Living Time

  Copyright © 2013 by Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Cornelius20/Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  One

  I sat under the gaze of some idiot who had watched too much poker on television as he stared at me like he knew what he was doing. I have no idea what he was looking for, and I had no doubt he didn’t know either, but he kept it up, trying to decide if he should toss in his last two hundred bucks and call my bet.

  He had on a heavy wool sweater and had taped one side of his glasses with white tape. The longer he stared at me, the more he sweated. He was in the third chair and I was in the sixth. The two men between us had both scooted their chairs back to stay out of the way of the showdown.

  Around us the Spirit Winds Casino poker room was doing a good business for ten o’clock on a Thursday night in the middle of January. Five tables were going, including two no-limit tables and from the looks of it there was a waiting list on the board.

  The noises from the slots and blackjack tables filtered into the room like a steady background of white noise and two of the televisions in the corners were on, both showing different professional basketball games.

  A couple players were sitting at empty tables just watching the games.

  I had two more hours before I needed to jump from the Oregon mountains to Las Vegas using my new teleportation power to pick up my girlfriend, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, from her job at the MGM Grand Hotel on the Strip. So I was enjoying a friendly game picking up a few hundred here and there along the way.

  In two hours it had been a profitable night, a large part because of the guy staring at me. He had started with almost a grand and was down to his last two hundred of the two racks of five-dollar chips he had sat down with.

  Outside the Casino the night felt like it would snow at any moment and the wind was biting and cold. In Vegas the temperature would be in the low fifties at midnight when I picked up Patty.

  At some point I was going to just move to Vegas, buy or build a place there. But I still liked this casino and the area around it and considered this casino my home casino, even though I didn’t spend much times these days in my doublewide trailer a few miles from here.

  In fact, I couldn’t remember the last night I had slept there. It hadn’t been since Patty and I got more serious and I learned how to teleport. And that had been a good six months.

  Down the table the guy just kept watching me, sweating, trying to decide what to do. I had a pair of aces down and there was an ace and two deuces on the board with a king. I doubted he had a pair of deuces in his hand, otherwise he would have called me at once and laughed while flipping his cards over.

  More than likely he had the 4th ace and a bad kicker. He might have a king and was wondering if I had an ace. Either way I had him beat and beat badly.

  I smiled at him, tipping back my black Fedora-like hat.

  “Anything I can tell you?” I asked him, smiling.

  The dealer frowned, but said nothing.

  The guy just shook his head, checked his cards again, then went back to staring at me.

  The more he sweated and stared, the more I stared to sense the guy had a problem larger than this hand. He was playing with money he couldn’t afford to lose. I had figured that much out earlier, and now I was about to take his last few hundred. The sweat on his forehead was for a lot more than just a hand and a couple hundred dollars. To this guy, he thought he was betting his entire life.

  And at a poker table, that never worked out well. Poker could be a very cruel game, especially when you shouldn’t be playing.

  He stared and stared, the sweat beading on his forehead and his eyes slits behind his broken glasses. More than likely he had read some stupid book on poker tells and was trying to watch me for one. So I decided to give him a tell from the first chapter.

  I leaned forward, pretending to want to flip my cards over and show him. The book said that if a player acted strong, they had a weak hand. I honestly didn’t care if he called me or not. I just wanted the stupid hand over.

  He smiled. “You don’t have it,” he said. “You’re bluffing.”

  He pushed in his last two hundred bucks and then waited for me to flip over my cards. If he had flipped his cards over I might have mucked and just given him the hand and the money, but he didn’t.

  I flipped over my two aces and his face went pale.

  “Might want to read that book again,” I said as the dealer shoved the pile of chips my way.

  The guy beside the loser on the end of the table just shook his head. “You should know better than to mess with Poker Boy.”

  I glanced at the guy again, pretending I wasn’t upset that he knew my superhero name. But I was.

  The dealer glanced at me, then went back to gathering the cards to shuffle.

  I didn’t like it that someone had used my superhero name here, in my home casino. I didn’t like it at all.

  I had a read on the guy from his play over the last two hours. Strong player, cautious, no real tells. He was someone to be very careful with. More than likely he was a pro. Of the chips that had come across the table in the last two hours, I had a large number of them and he had the rest.

  He wore a tan Izod golf shirt and had put his ski parka on a hook beside the door. He had brown short hair and brown eyes and a slightly hooked nose. He looked to be about thirty, but I could be off in either direction by a decade.

  He looked to be about my height at six foot. But he looked stronger, with wider, football-player-like shoulders and neck.

  He was nothing exceptional and except for his play, he had stayed under my radar for the two hours he had been at the table. I had just not paid him much attention.

  Impressive.

  “Have we met?” I asked as I stacked the chips, knowing for a fact that we had never met before. I did not forget a face. I had trouble with names, but never a face. That was part of my superpowers. And as a poker player, I know I would have remembered him from his play.

  “Nope,” the guy said, smiling. “Stan sent me.”

  My stomach flipped, but I kept stacking my chips trying to get some sort of read on the situation.

  The loser beside him finally decided he was done and shoved his chair back, clearly angry at his loss.

  “I hope you two are proud of yourselves,” he said looking at me, then at the guy I had been talking to. “I know collusion when I see it.”

  The guy I had been talking to who claimed Stan had sent him reached over casually and just touched the arm of the guy. “We’re just having a friendly game here,” he said. “Nothing out of the ordinary, I can promise you.”

  The guy sort of stood there for a moment, then shook his head and laughed. “Yeah, I know that. Just sort of mad at my own stupid play.”

  Wow! The guy had some powers! I was stunned.

  “Actually,” the guy said to the angry man, “you are pretty damn fine player. You just ran into the best tonight.”

  The guy nodded. “Thanks, appreciate that.” He looked at me, smiled and said, “Nice playing with you.”

  Then the guy walke
d off as I stared at the guy who knew my name. I felt I should follow the guy out to see what he planned to do after his loss, but at that moment I was more concerned with the guy across from me who knew my name.

  “You said Stan sent you?” I asked. “Which Stan?”

  “Your boss of course,” the guy said, smiling.

  Two

  I instantly took the two of us out of time, freezing everyone else in the room. All the sounds of the casino vanished and everyone stayed in place, stuck between two moments in time.

  Except the two of us.

  “Wow, nifty trick,” the guy said, his eyes large as he looked around. “I hope I can learn how to do that someday.”

  “Stan!” I shouted at the ceiling as I stood and moved a few steps away from the poker table.

  A moment later Stan, the God of Poker, appeared in front of me. He was wearing his normal tan slacks, tan shirt and sweater and he was smiling.

  “Good,” he said to me. “I see you’ve met The Kid. How’d he do?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Stan smiled and looked at the chips in front of both of our chairs. “Doesn’t look like he got much of your money.”

  “He’s a fine player,” I said. “I just want to know how he knows me and you?”

  “I’m right here, guys,” The Kid said, waving his hand.

  Stan laughed. “He’s the new recruit. So how did he do?”

  “Besides blurting out my name in front of an entire table, and mentioning your name, and being way too old to be called kid, he played decent poker.”

  Stan looked at The Kid and shook his head. “You never say another superhero’s name out loud in front of regular people.”

  “Sorry,” The Kid said, actually looking worried and sheepish. “I didn’t know.”

  Stan laughed and waved it off. “You’ll learn.”

  I couldn’t begin to count the times Stan had used those same words with me in my first few years as a superhero. And now that I was actually looking at The Kid, he did look a lot younger than my first take on his age. At most he was twenty-five. It was a nifty trick being able to shift his age appearance like that. I would have to learn it.

  “New recruit?” I asked Stan. “Working for you?”

  “Yup,” Stan said, smiling. “Laverne approved it and everything. She said you and your team are doing more work for all of the Gods and I needed the help with just poker.”

  “I told you that last week,” I said, smiling at him.

  I walked over to The Kid and stuck out my hand as he stood from the table. “Nice meeting you, Kid.”

  “The honor is all mine, Poker Boy,” The Kid said, smiling and shaking my hand like I was a rock star. “You are the smoothest player I have ever had the honor to sit with.”

  “You ain’t half bad yourself,” I said. “And nice job staying hidden as long as you did.”

  “Thanks,” he said, beaming.

  I remembered in my early years how important it was to have someone tell me I did something right. Hell, after ten years now, it was still important. I doubt it would ever get old.

  Then I got serious as I turned back to Stan. “I can handle it from here,” I said. “We have some work to do.”

  “Give him time,” Stan said to me. “Don’t push too hard.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  Stan vanished and I turned back to The Kid. “Come with me. We have a problem to clean up.”

  The kid looked puzzled, but followed me through the frozen people and the silence of the casino.

  “This is just creepy,” he said, staring at a woman chewing on a large hotdog, her mouth open and full of half-eaten bun.

  About halfway across the casino I found who I was looking for. The guy who had been at the table on that last hand. I had taken the last of his money.

  “Did you sense any problem with this guy?” I asked The Kid.

  “He was desperate, playing with important money. That’s why I tried to calm him some.”

  “And you did fine with that, but my sense is that what you did won’t be enough. I may be wrong, but if I’m not, I want to make sure nothing goes too wrong.”

  The Kid looked puzzled, but only nodded.

  “Now, let’s get back to the table so I can put us in real time again. Follow my lead.”

  Three

  When we were both seated, I put us back into the nature flow of time. The sounds of the casino smashed into us.

  “Let’s go talk,” I said to The Kid and pushed my chair back.

  “Glad to,” he said. Then to the dealer he said, “We’ll be right back.”

  The dealer nodded and began dealing to the other six at the table.

  The Kid stayed with me as we left the poker room.

  “Dead camera area here,” I said and jumped us to a dead camera area in the parking lot.

  The Kid looked stunned. “Wow, do I have a lot to learn.”

  “Give it time,” I said, heading toward the front door of the casino.

  A moment later the guy who had tried to get a read on me came out of the front door and turned to the left toward one of the parking lots. When he got there, he climbed into an old Ford that looked like it had seen its better days.

  Then he just sat behind the wheel as if he had no place to go.

  More than likely, if my sense of him was right, he didn’t.

  The Kid and I stood off to one side near a truck so we could watch him and not be seen. I had on my black leather coat and hat that was my superhero uniform, but I could still feel the cold wind. The Kid was in a short-sleeved golf shirt and he was shaking already.

  “You might want to learn to always wear a jacket of some sort in a poker room,” I said. “Both for sitting under air-conditioning and for this job.”

  “I’ll remember that,” he said, his teeth almost chattering.

  “Where you from?” I asked.

  “Southern California,” he said.

  “You want to go back in for your coat?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll make it.”

  At that moment the guy in the car moved. But he didn’t go to turn on his car. Instead, he reached over to his glove box and opened it and pulled out what looked to be a pistol of some type.

  “Shit, he’s going to off himself,” The Kid said, starting to run at the car.

  I jumped us out of time again, then called for The Kid to hold on. He stopped and waited for me.

  “I really need to learn how to do that,” he said.

  Then he followed me over to the car as I opened the car door, took the gun from the guy’s hand, unloaded the clip, made sure there was no round anywhere in the gun, then put the gun back in the guy’s hand, closed the door and indicated that The Kid should follow me away from the car.

  “You were sure right about the guy,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “Just reading people,” I said.

  We got back to where we had been and I let us go back into the flow of time. The wind again hit us hard and The Kid shivered.

  “Follow my lead completely,” I said and he nodded as we started back toward the guy’s car.

  He didn’t see us coming. He just kept staring at the gun in his hands until I knocked on the window and startled him.

  He tried to hide the gun by dropping it on the floor before he opened the car door and stepped out into the cold.

  “Yeah,” he said. “So you two really are together.”

  “Not really,” I said. “In fact, we just met tonight at the table, but we were both worried about you.”

  “You are the only people on the planet who are,” he said, the sarcasm clear in his voice. “Thanks.”

  He was in even worse shape than I thought.

  I turned on what I call my “empathy-power” and directed it at the guy. And also the power I call “tell-me-the-truth.” With both of those powers directed at the poor guy, he had no choice but tell me what was going on like I was a trusted counselor he had pou
red his heart out to for years.

  “So how bad is it?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  “No job, my wife left me six months ago, I’m homeless, and you took the last of my money. I don’t even have gas money to get off this stupid mountain and back to Portland. That’s how bad.”

  “That’s bad,” I said, nodding.

  Beside me The Kid nodded, but said nothing.

  “So what did you do for a living?” I asked.

  He laughed. “What every other unemployed person around this area did. I worked construction. Actually, I had my own construction business, had a dozen guys working for me, building some of the best custom homes in Oregon. Bobby C. Davis Construction.”

  He said the name of his business with pride and I suddenly had a great idea to help this guy not put the barrel of that gun in his mouth.

  I laughed. “Great meeting you,” I said and extended my hand. “I’m Gary Barnes.”

  Gary Barnes was one of my fake names I used in the real world when I had to. Actually, everyone around this casino called me Gary and my doublewide trailer a couple miles away was under that name as well.

  The kid stepped forward to shake the guy’s hand. “I’m Roger Stevens,” he said.

  I had a hunch that was a made-up name by The Kid as well.

  “Bob Davis,” the guy said, now even more puzzled.

  I kept the empathy power turned on high and focused at him and then also turned on my “trust-me” power. This poor guy was putty in my hands, especially in his depressed condition. Luckily, I only used my powers for good.

  “I actually looked for your business a few months back,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was a poker player. Lying was part of our job description. “I’ve been wanting to build a custom home on some property I have near here, a big, beautiful custom home, and your firm was recommended to me a number of times.”

  “Really?” he asked, smiling. Then his mood turned again. “See how quality work turns out?” He pointed at the old car he was driving. “I sold my rig and most of my tools to get living money and money to pay my child support. I hoped to win enough tonight to make next month’s payment and get a little apartment. That went well as you know.”