Pink Shoes and Hot Chocolate: A Poker Boy story

  Pink Shoes and Hot Chocolate

  A Poker Boy Story

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Pink Shoes and Hot Chocolate

  Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright Ariwasabi/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.

  Pink Shoes and Hot Chocolate

  One

  When you’re a superhero, you don’t often notice pink women’s shoes. I’m usually far too busy saving the world from evil, saving dogs from sure death, or playing professional poker, my day job that pays the bills of being a superhero. Pink shoes rarely come into the picture. In fact, I have no memory of ever thinking about pink shoes before.

  Yet there sat a pair of bright pink dress shoes with very long heals on the small pile of brown sand six miles outside of Las Vegas.

  The wind was blowing through the sagebrush and rocks and I was having trouble keeping my black, Fedora-like poker hat on my head. The hat was part of my superhero costume, along with my black leather jacket. With the hat and jacket on and a casino nearby, I had more powers than I have had time to explore. Sometimes my powers even surprise me.

  But out in the desert, with the wind threatening to take my hat and make me chase it like a playful dog through the rocks, I didn’t feel very powerful. And the pair of women’s pink shoes sitting on the mound didn’t help the issue.

  Around me, the very early morning sun was heating up the desert to the point that shortly it would be far too warm for me to wear my black leather jacket even with a wind. The heat was the reason I had headed out of town at five in the morning. I never saw five in the morning normally, except from the night side. Getting up at this frightful hour showed how much I cared about this case. It had taken me only an hour to find the shoes, since I had a hunch exactly where to look.

  The pink shoes belonged to Carol Savage, a thin, athletic Keno runner at the Atlantis Hotel and Casino. Carol stood two inches taller than my six-foot height and she was much, much thinner. Not that I’m fat. I’m not. Carol is just thin.

  Carol had a smile that could light up a room and her dark green eyes seemed to laugh at everything. I figured she had to have a great life attitude, being a Keno runner. The old joke around the poker world was that Keno was for gamblers who had lost the will to live. Carol radiated life like the sun gave off light. She was a joy to be around, always.

  Bernice, the God of Keno, hated that old joke, but of all the Gambling Gods, she was the lowest ranked and only had one superhero like me working under her. That was Carol, also known as SK (Super Keno) to the rest of the Gambling Gods and all the superheroes who worked for them.

  Everyone liked SK; Bernice we could all do without.

  When Carol went missing, I got the first call to help find her. Every one of the Gambling Gods seemed to know that she and I had been an item five or six years back, working a couple of cases together. That was before I met Front Desk Girl.

  I am known as Poker Boy, one of a dozen poker superheroes working under Stan, the God of Poker.

  And, of course, we all worked under Laverne, Lady Luck herself. And when Laverne asked Stan to have me search for Carol, what was I going to say? Hell, you don’t turn down Lady Luck if you ever wanted to win another hand of cards.

  With one hand I held my hat on my head and with the other I picked up Carol’s pink shoes and studied them. Nothing unusual. She had simply kicked them off and put them on the sand.

  I had seen no sign of Carol’s car along the road, or any car parked close by, so either she had hidden it in the desert somewhere or someone had dropped her off here.

  I placed the pink shoes back exactly where Carol had left them and studied the flat desert around me, squinting my eyes and trying to draw on what superpowers I had remaining this far from a casino. It wasn’t much, I do have to admit, like a car trying to run on three of six cylinders. I sputtered a lot, but finally found what I was looking for.

  There, in plain sight, yet hidden so any normal mortal would never see it, was the opening to the Silicon Suckers city. I had no idea why Carol hadn’t used the main entrance under the Hilton Billboard on Highway 95, but she must have had her reasons. I knew the desert was scattered with entrances to the Silicon Sucker’s city, but I had only found one other besides the main entrance and this one.

  Silicon Suckers were a race of intelligent creatures that had lived on Earth far, far longer than mankind. They were secretive and shy at best, and almost impossible to see if they didn’t want to be seen. They inhabited the major deserts of the world, living in cities underground.

  Legends of aliens visiting Earth had come about from sightings of Silicon Suckers. They were commonly called The Grays by UFO nuts. They had large heads, large eyes, no chins, and flat ears. Their arms and legs were thinner than Carol’s and they seldom wore clothes. Even without clothes, I couldn’t tell the difference between a female and a male Silicon Sucker, although I was told that the difference was clear if you knew what you were looking for.

  With humans I knew. Not a clue with Silicon Suckers and I had no great desire to look.

  The Silicon Suckers were a highly ritualized race, and the best way to get on their bad side was to violate one of their customs. Wearing shoes in their city was a major violation. Not bringing them a gift they would like when visiting was another. I had a small thermos of hot chocolate in my jacket pocket as my gift to them. Hot chocolate, for some reason or another, was a major delicacy for them. A thermos-full would be shared by the drop among thousands.

  I once watched a Silicon Sucker put a drop of hot chocolate on his snake-like tongue and then just stand there, huge eyes closed, swaying back and forth humming something that sounded a lot like our National Anthem played very, very slowly.

  Whatever the Silicon Sucker experienced with the hot chocolate was clearly something I could only imagine, since I didn’t drink and have never taken drugs of any kind.

  I just hoped Carol had known enough about the Suckers to bring them something good. I had a hunch, though, she had done something very, very wrong, since after three days missing, her shoes were still here.

  Just in case I needed to buy her way out, I had two other thermoses full of hot chocolate in pockets inside my coat.

  I took a deep breath, kicked off my old Nike tennis shoes and left them beside Carol’s pink shoes, then headed for the opening between the two rocks. I had been inside the Silicon Sucker’s city near Las Vegas three times over my years as a superhero, and it always made me uncomfortable and itchy. The last time I had been trying to save the life of an old college girlfriend who had been given new breast implants made from the sand of a sacred Silicon Suckers burial site

  The Suckers wanted their dead ancestors back; my old girlfriend wasn’t willing to give them back, no matter how much I pleaded or offered to pay for another operation. She was found dead a month later. I seldom like to think how she died, since the myth about alien probes have a basis in the Silicon Suckers’ belief that the only way inside a human body is through the anus.

  Those were very large breasts she had. It had to have been painful.

  Two

  I had no idea what case Carol had been working for the Ga
mbling Gods to take her to a Silicon Suckers city. But Stan had told me to look here first, and I had found her shoes at the second entrance I checked.

  I stopped at the entrance to the city, bowed once exactly as prescribed for any visitor to the city, and then stepped through the slight magic spell that hid the entrance from normal humans.

  Inside the dry, brown cave, two Silicon Suckers bowed in return and then indicated I should follow them.

  My nose was assaulted by the smell of sand and an intense dryness to the air. My skin felt suddenly tight as if the air was trying to suck every ounce of moisture from my body.

  Actually, it was.

  They led me down toward the city in what looked like nothing more than a cave carved out of the desert sand and rock. It was lit faintly by soft lights hidden along the ceiling. The more we walked, the raspier my throat felt. It had happened every time to me, but no water was allowed in their cities, so I hadn’t dared bring anything to help with the dryness and intense thirst that would soon hit me.

  And drinking any of the hot chocolate I had with me while in their city was considered a terminal offence.

  I worried a lot about Carol being able to survive three days without water in this environment. I know I would have a hard time.

  It wasn’t until we had walked downward for almost a half hour that we finally emerged into the vast central chamber of the Silicon Suckers city.

  The first time I had seen the massive city with the teaming thousands of Suckers moving about their daily lives, I had been stunned. This time was no different.

  Towers of sand-colored round buildings shot from the cavern floor at least thirty stories into the air, elevated walkways spanned the open spaces between the buildings, and the entire cavern hummed with a distant ocean sound that I had been told was nothing more than the sound of a lot of Silicon Suckers moving around at once.

  The cavern was lit by an intense, sun-like light, right in the middle and thousands of other lights on the buildings and along the wide streets. No carriages or any type of transportation moved inside the city. Silicon Suckers walked everywhere they went.

  And the huge chamber felt even drier than the tunnels, if that was possible. It smelled of lightly burned wood, and I found myself blinking a lot more than normal to keep some hint of moisture in my eyes.

  Thousands and thousands of openings went into the dirt all the way around the cavern. We had come out of one such opening about twenty stories in the air, and immediately started down a fairly wide path along the wall.

  There was no guardrail on the edge of the path, so I stayed to the inside, hugging the wall. I might be a superhero in the gambling world, but I was fairly certain that none of my superpowers included flying. Flying just didn’t seem to be of much use at a poker table.

  Without ever asking me what I wanted or who I wanted to see, my two guides led me down to the ground level of the city, then into a building that had to be twenty stories tall and was fairly close to the center of the city. I couldn’t tell one tall, brown tower from another, but for some reason this one felt special to me.

  Inside they lead me into another tunnel that continued down for another two or three stories, finally opening into a large chamber with four Silicon Suckers sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor in a circle.

  Carol sat cross-legged with them, nodding at something.

  She glanced up and saw me, then burst into a huge smile that must have hurt her extremely chapped and dry lips.

  “Poker Boy,” she said without standing. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Laverne sent me,” I said, moving toward the circle.

  “I know,” Carol said, a twinkle in her eyes.

  I had no idea how she could know that. But asking at that moment just seemed very, very wrong.

  Three

  One of my guides indicated that I should sit in the open spot in the circle beside Carol facing the four Silicon Suckers.

  Even though I wanted to hug or even lightly touch Carol to tell her I was glad to see her, I knew something simple as a touch between humans in a Silicon Sucker city would a very bad breach of protocol, and since I had no idea what was going on or what part I was to play, I was very careful to not sit too near Carol.

  After taking my position, I reached into my front pocket and pulled out a thermos of hot chocolate.

  In my best Silicon Sucker click and wheep and stutter, I said, “A gift to thank you for the honor of visiting your wonderful city.”

  At least I hope that was what I said.

  I sat the thermos down and placed my hands in my lap, bowing my head in just the right manor to show respect.

  “We accept your wonderful gift to our people. Welcome again, Poker Boy. You are always an honored member of our city.”

  The Silicon Sucker who spoke didn’t move his tiny lips and I wasn’t sure if I heard his words with my ears or inside my head. Didn’t matter, at least he spoke in English and I didn’t have to attempt his language any more.

  I nodded my thank you, as prescribed, but said nothing more.

  “May we resume our discussions?” Carol asked, her words sounding hoarse from so much exposure to the dry air.

  I had no idea how, if she had been down here for three days, she was even managing to sit and talk. Her strength stunned me, but clearly it was wearing on her. Even a superhero like her had limits.

  The Silicon Sucker on the right nodded and in the middle of the circle, floating in the air, a map appeared, shimmering and see-through.

  It took me a moment to realize exactly what I was looking at. The Silicon Suckers city was colored in gold on the map, their sacred burial grounds in gold, as well as large acres of other ground I had no idea what they used it for. Highway 95 on one side marked one border and the edge of the city of Las Vegas was a black area on the map.

  It seemed that a tiny area just off Highway 95 was in question, as it was blinking between gold and black. When I realized the scale of the map, that tiny area suddenly became larger than a hundred acres.

  “I am sure we can come to a fair exchange for the land in question,” Carol said, nodding her respect as she spoke. “Poker Boy has brought the first of our many payments to you.”

  Carol nodded to me and I stared at her for a moment, wondering for a second just exactly what she was talking about. Then I remembered the two other thermoses of hot chocolate I had inside my coat.

  I took out one and placed it carefully beside the first, bowing with respect as I did, then placed the third beside the other two.

  I had no idea what to say at such a moment, and as I had learned over the years in both poker and doing superhero deeds, if you aren’t sure exactly what to say, say nothing.

  But damned if I didn’t want to ask Carol how she knew I would bring those extra two thermoses with me.

  Carol bowed slightly to the Silicon Suckers. “Only the first of many payments to come in exchange for the use of your very valuable land.”

  “May we understand, please, that your people will bring us every full moon cycle, ten such containers of the precious fluid?”

  Carol nodded. “That is my understanding, yes.”

  I almost snorted, which would have been a huge breach in protocol and more than likely an insult in the Silicon Suckers language. I couldn’t believe that Carol was trading what looked like a good one hundred acres of land near Highway 95 for basically ten large mugs of hot chocolate per month. I knew land prices were down, but that was ridiculous.

  Four

  “It is agreed,” the Silicon Sucker said. The parcel on the map that had been going between gold and black turned black and stayed black.

  “It is agreed,” Carol said.

  The map vanished and the four Silicon Suckers stood and turned away, moving toward an opening in the brown sand wall.

  Carol struggled to her feet and stood, clearly exhausted and dehydrated. She needed to get to the hospital and get there quickly, but there was no way I could dare touch
her to help her until we cleared that entrance a good fifty stories over our heads.

  Our two guides appeared and nodded that we should follow them. I stepped in behind Carol and we headed upward through what I thought was the same tunnel we had come down.

  For the first hundred or so steps, Carol staggered, and I was afraid she was going to fall, then she seemed to gain some inner strength and her back straightened, her head came up, and she looked straight ahead as if walking the floor selling Keno tickets.

  She was one strong lady.

  Back at the surface, we both bowed to our guides and stepped through into the extreme temperatures of the desert in the middle of the afternoon. It had to be well over one hundred and the dry wind hit us both like a hammer.

  Carol walked ten steps and then went down, face-first, right on her pink shoes.

  The hot wind battered at my hat as I knelt beside her. She was out completely, and from the looks of her in the light, she was on the verge of dying from dehydration.

  I snapped open my cell phone and called 911, telling them where along the highway to have an ambulance meet me, then I called my girlfriend and sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, a.k.a. Front Desk Girl, and told her to find Stan and tell him I was coming in with SK and to get our people at the hospital ready.

  I carried the thin Keno-runner superhero to my rental car and laid her out on the back seat. She weighed almost nothing and that scared me a lot. She couldn’t die for a piece of property. That just seemed too stupid. I had almost died a number of times trying to rescue a person, but never for a real estate sale, especially in a bad market.

  Five

  I met the ambulance at the corner I had indicated, and they worked on her for a good fifteen minutes, getting fluid into her system and checking her vitals before loading her into the ambulance and rushing to the hospital, lights and sirens blaring, with me right on their tail.