Fighting the Fuzzy-Wuzzy: A Poker Boy story Read online

  “It has worked.”

  Then he turned to all of us as Stan climbed back to his feet.

  Suddenly Wolfgang Sucker’s head stopped moving, and his blue eyes stared directly at us.

  “This great battle will be shown on the heads of a thousand of my brothers for centuries to come. It has been my honor to be a member of your team, Poker Boy.”

  With that he vanished.

  “Well, you all did it again,” Laverne said from directly behind me.

  We all spun to face Lady Luck.

  She was smiling, and when Lady Luck smiles on you, you know it.

  “Someday we might have to start paying all of you if this keeps up.”

  She laughed at her own joke, since superheroes don’t get paid.

  Then she winked at Stan. “Teach him how to jump through space, would you? I worry about him taking so many airplane flights.”

  Then she got serious. “Thank you. Every one of you. It was a perfect bluff, and a perfect idea. I just wish you all had been around in Atlantis’ time.”

  With that she vanished.

  Stan turned to me, smiling. “Well done, as usual.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was so stunned that my idea had worked, I just sort of felt nothing.

  “Milkshakes are on me,” Stan said. Then he smiled even larger, “If you can get us there, Poker Boy, without calling a cab.”

  And suddenly I knew how to jump through space, from one location to another. I don’t know how I knew, but I just did.

  “That’s a deal,” I said. I took Patty’s hand in mine and said to Stan, “Race you.”

  An instant later, I had my team sitting in our regular booth in The Diner as a fraction of a second later Stan appeared, still smiling.

  Wow, that felt good.

  Patty just squeezed my hand and smiled. Then she whispered in my ear, “Now we can see a lot more of each other.”

  I liked that idea. I liked it a lot.

  The sound of crashing glass made us all turn around as one.

  Madge was dancing on the counter in front of the kitchen. She seemed to be doing dance moves not thought of in years, and considering she always wore slacks three sizes too tight, it wasn’t a scene that any sane person could watch for very long.

  Stan started laughing and The Smoke just covered his eyes.

  After a moment, all of us started laughing.

  “Why not?” Screamer asked, and got up and started dancing as well, quickly joining Madge on the countertop.

  “Looks like milkshakes are going to be a minute,” I said between huge laughs of relief.

  “Thanks to all of you,” Stan said, “we have the time to wait.”

  About the Author

  Bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith is the author of over one hundred novels and hundreds of short stories. Not only has he written for Pocket Book in the Star Trek universe, but did the only two original Men in Black novels for Bantam Books. He has been an editor and a publisher and is currently writing thrillers under another name.

  If you liked “Fighting the Fuzzy-Wuzzy,” you might also like these other Poker Boy stories:

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  Sighed the Snake

  Luck Be A Lady

  Dead Even

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  Daddy is an Undertaker