Smith's Monthly #7 Page 5

  I figured since Stan, the God of Poker, mentions this event a few times in the novel, I had better let everyone read the story first.

  Poker Boy, still a freshly-minted superhero just learning the ropes at the time of this story, runs smack into the charms of someone who knows his secret name, knows who he is. And won’t let him use his superpowers.

  As a red-blooded young man with needs and hormones, Poker Boy must face those challenges in an epic battle of perfect skin, stunning looks, and a hormone-clouded mind.

  GODS AREN’T FUNNY

  A Poker Boy Story

  I WAS STARTING to really dread Christmas Eve.

  I mean, do you blame me? Two Christmas Eves ago my old girlfriend, Julie Downer, came to me for help. Then she didn’t like my suggestions about what to do, even though I offered to pay for her new boob job.

  Eventually she ended up getting her breasts sucked out through her ass by the Silicon Suckers, which needless to say, killed her.

  Makes me shudder just to think about it.

  And then last year short Bob showed up in the poker room, knowing he was going to die in the morning, and wanting to leave with ten thousand so that he could go out of the world exactly as he had come in: Dead Even.

  As a poker player, I understood his desire, but his poker playing ability sucked, right along with his bad temper. I ended up just giving him the ten big ones on a sham bet. He died right when he said he would.

  So do you blame me for being a little spooked about this third Christmas Eve? Two years in a row someone who had come to me for help on Christmas Eve had died. And neither of them I could have done anything about, even though during the last year I had wondered if I could have.

  Guilt trips are often my strong suit, which I understand from other superheroes, is one of our professional hazards. We help fifty people, but it’s the one we can’t help that haunts us. I had two on two successive Christmas Eves that I couldn’t save. I was in guilt trip heaven.

  Now, it was Christmas Eve morning again. So far no one had shown up, and I was determined to forget Bob and Julie and just have my normal Christmas Eve.

  The day dawned bright, the air crisp, the light snow not bothering anyone getting to Spirit Winds Casino.

  My plan for this Christmas Eve was the same as I had done for the last dozen or so holidays, at least the ones people didn’t die around me.

  I would go over to the Casino in the early evening, and get into a poker game with the rest of the non-family poker players. Many poker players don’t have family, and many of us like it that way, so I had little worries that there wouldn’t be a game.

  I would play until some time in the morning, go home and get some sleep, and be back in the poker room after a turkey dinner in the buffet. If I timed it right, I would be there for the really good games that always started later Christmas Day.

  An aside. A really good game to a professional poker player like myself is when there are a bunch of people with a lot of money and very little skill. Those kinds of players were there to have fun, and I bless them for their goals. I did everything in my power to have fun right along with them as I took their money.

  Late Christmas Day seemed to have an extra number of these types showing up, done with their family obligations and ready to have some fun.

  I loved my holiday schedule, I loved the sameness of it year after year, I loved not having to put up a tree or buy anyone presents or hang stupid lights on my gutters. I just did my thing and enjoyed it. So even though I was a superhero, sworn to help those I could help, I didn’t want anyone to come asking for help this Christmas Eve. My track record just wasn’t good on this day.

  I’d even lost a dog the first year, and that was the only time in my memory of being Poker Boy, superhero who helps people and saves dogs, that I had ever lost a dog. Other people had died when they didn’t take my advice, which wasn’t my fault. And there really hadn’t been anything I could have done to stop Bob’s massive heart attack last year. I could sort of live with that, but I hated not being able to save dogs.

  I had almost made it to the poker room when I saw her.

  She was sitting on a bench near the front door of the casino, her back to the window, her posture straight, her eyes focused on the people who went past, watching every move, clearly searching for something or someone.

  She had longish blonde hair, a body that looked tanned and in good shape, and she definitely had her proportions in order. She was also at least fifteen years younger than me.

  So sue me, I’m human underneath all the superhero stuff. I can look at a good-looking woman, even though a woman like the one sitting there never looked back.

  Then she looked up at me, directly at me, actually seeing me, and I was struck by her deep, blue eyes.

  She smiled and I was pulled by her wonderful, friendly smile.

  She patted the bench beside her and I knew at once I was hooked, not by the woman’s charms, or good looks, or great, perfectly proportioned body, but by some power even greater than my Poker Boy casino-fed powers.

  I moved over, walking like a stiff-legged zombie in a bad movie, and sat beside her as if I didn’t have an ounce of control over my body. And when a superhero loses control of his body, that’s a very bad sign.

  An aside. I have been with my share of beautiful women over the years who have made me lose control of all, or part, of my body, and that is not what had just happened. This was no little head controlling the big head. This was magic or superpower or something besides womanly charms, although I must admit, womanly charms often act like a superpower on me.

  Just not this time.

  When I was seated, I felt the control over whatever had made me do the monster walk loosen, and then vanish, like heat coming from an oven when you open the door and try to look in too fast.

  My eyes fogged for an instant, I felt flush, and then it was gone.

  “Wow, that was pretty good,” I said. “You use that power for helping others, or just making people walk funny?”

  She laughed, the sound high and just a trifle shrill, but she was so good-looking, and had such perfect skin on her perfectly proportioned body, I didn’t much care about a slightly-off laugh.

  “No,” she said, “I’m no superhero like you, Poker Boy.”

  My instant reaction was Shit! She knew my name!

  But she went on talking before those words came out of my mouth.

  “Dave gave me that power,” she said, “to make sure I got your attention when I found you. I could only use it the one time.”

  “Dave?” I asked, actually getting the word out of my suddenly dry mouth. My stomach was twisting like I had just had two big polish dogs and forgot to take an antacid. There was only one Dave I knew who could give superpowers away like they were quarters.

  “Dave,” she said, nodding. “I was sitting in his office just yesterday.”

  For a moment the word “Dave” echoed a little around the lobby of the casino like she had shouted it into a deep canyon.

  An aside. In my world there are a number of what are called Gambling Gods. My superpower as Poker Boy, I am sure, comes directly from the Gambling Gods. Now these gods are more like what I would have imagined the old Greek gods were like.

  And there is a very clear hierarchy in the Gambling Gods’ world.

  The hierarchy is set up just like a casino management. In fact, there’s a major discussion about whether the gods just recently patterned their world on how super casinos were run, or if casinos patterned their management after how the gods have always been.

  I actually think the Gambling Gods have always had the same management system, and modern super casinos just followed along naturally. Or not so naturally, but that’s only my opinion, and I really don’t know for sure.

  Near the top of this system is the General Manager, one of the many Gods working right under Lady Luck herself. The General Manager is one of the most powerful, can stomp on other gods like they were ants, and pre
tty much controls the nature of the world behind the normal world that most people see in the gaming and hotel worlds.

  Below the General Manager comes the Head of Casino Operations, then the Head of Hotel Operations. Below them are all the directors, such as Director of Security, Director of Food and Beverage, Director of Entertainment, and so on. And below that group are the regular gods, such as the Keno God and the God of Poker.

  The gods below those, if there were that many, didn’t much count, and I figured I had as much power as Poker Boy as many of the lower level gods, like Pit Bosses and Shift Supervisors. But they are still considered gods in the realm of things, and I am only a superhero, so what do I know. I certainly have no plan on putting my powers up against any of them.

  Now this woman had just finished telling me she had talked to Dave, had been in Dave’s office, and had gotten the power trick to get me to sit down from Dave.

  To say I was stunned would be an understatement. Dave was the General Manager.

  You didn’t bow to Dave, or worship him, but you certainly didn’t mess with Dave, or make him angry. I honestly hoped I would never even meet Dave. I figured it was just safer that way.

  And no way in hell did I ever want to meet Lady Luck.

  Now Dave had sent this good-looking woman to me.

  Up until this moment, I wasn’t even sure if the General Manager of everything even knew I existed.

  I desperately wanted to ask her what Dave’s office looked like, what Dave looked like for that matter, but somehow I refrained from being a god geek and asked the most intelligent question I could think of.

  “Dave sent you to me, huh? It must be really important.”

  Duh. Dumb-ass question. This was not getting off to a good start.

  “I think it is,” she said. “My name is Audrey Koch. Can I buy you a drink and tell you about it?”

  Here was a beautiful woman asking to buy me a drink on Christmas Eve, and I was scared more than I have been in years.

  “Buy me a Diet Coke” I said, keeping my voice level and my poker face on. Thank god I was a poker player and I could do that under stressful situations. “I’ll be glad to listen.”

  “Great,” she said, standing up quickly like the bench had an ejection button.

  I got up a little more slowly, making sure that all the Come-and-sit-beside-me spell was gone. It was, and two minutes later we were in the bar.

  The place had twenty tables and a big screen t.v. Only one other couple sat against the far wall, so we took a table in front of the window looking out at the people headed from the hotel to the casino.

  Audrey ordered an eggnog drink that sounded like it could cause diabetes all by itself, and I stuck with my original plan. I didn’t want any alcohol because I still held out hope of getting to the poker table tonight. But with Dave sticking his all-powerful nose into my Christmas Eve, that hope was fading quickly.

  “Here’s my problem,” Audrey said, getting right to the point. She looked me right in the eye and with the most serious of expressions on her face said, “I need to get laid. And it has to happen in the next four hours and ten minutes.”

  She actually looked at her watch as she said that second sentence.

  I glanced at my watch as well. Seven-fifty. Four hours and ten minutes until Christmas.

  She wanted to get laid on Christmas Eve. Why?

  I must have heard her wrong. That couldn’t be the big problem. The General Manager of the Big Casino couldn’t be pimping me to some woman. It wasn’t possible.

  Besides, this woman could get just about any man she blinked at.

  “Would you repeat that?” I asked.

  She laughed, the sound echoing through the almost empty bar. Again the laugh was just a little off, but the wonderful blue eyes and the perfect smile made me not care at all.

  “I need to have sex before midnight with a superhero. And Dave thought you would be the best choice for me.”

  “Oh, Dave thought I would, huh?”

  She nodded, smiling. “And I agree. You’re older than I usually like in men, but you’re cute.”

  Okay, I’m a poker player, a guy who is usually in complete control of his emotions, yet right at that moment I didn’t have a clue if I should feel angry, excited, flattered, or insulted. I was being pimped by the big guy in the Executive Suite to a young, very attractive woman. There had to be something I was missing, and I needed to resort to my superpowers to find out.

  I turned on my Tell-Me-No-Lies Superpower and stared directly at her.

  An aside. I used to call this power my Empathy Superpower, but that never seemed to fit, so this year I finally renamed it.

  “Why do you need to sleep with a superhero before Christmas Day?” I asked, directing all my power at her.

  No person could resist me.

  She resisted.

  But no person could resist me.

  She still resisted, bouncing my superpower away like it was water on a freshly waxed car.

  Then she blushed.

  “Dave said you might try to get the truth out of me,” she said. “He’s blocked all your powers from working on me.”

  Then she shrugged and smiled. “Sorry.”

  I stopped focusing my useless power and sat back. What good was a superhero with his superpowers not working? I pushed that thought away, and all thoughts of feeling sorry for myself, and directed my attention to her.

  “You’re not going to tell me why you want to sleep with me inside this time frame, are you?”

  “I can’t,” she said, the look on her face deadly serious.

  I sat there thinking while the waitress served our drinks and took Audrey’s money. I could only come up with a couple of reasons for this strange request.

  First, the General Manager was rewarding me for all my good deeds over the years. But that didn’t seem to be Dave’s style. And this kind of reward certainly wasn’t mine either.

  Second, this was a bet. Bets in the Gambling God’s world were everyday things. Someone might have bet I would sleep with this woman before Christmas Day, giving up my evening of poker for sex. And Dave was in on the bet in some fashion.

  I could think of no other reason this woman needed to sleep with a superhero this evening, before midnight.

  None.

  And if there was a reason, she should be able to tell me. Only things like bets made silly rules like not telling.

  So it had to be a bet.

  And I was just a pawn in the bet. Nothing more. But did I want to play poker tonight and let one side win the bet, or sleep with a beautiful, young woman, and let the other side win?

  Actually, that was a tough choice for a professional poker player at my age. At twenty-nine, there would be no thought. The little head would have controlled the decision and thirty minutes later I’d be looking at this young woman’s nude body.

  But at my slightly older age, sleeping with a woman always brought many side effects. I don’t mean this to sound like I don’t have relationships. I do. Just not ones that started in Dave’s office and brought me into the picture doing a zombie walk. Thinking back, not one of my long-term relationships with women has started that way, and I doubted this would either.

  My little voice told me there was still something I was missing.

  An aside. My little voice isn’t a superpower, but it saves me more often than my powers do.

  “Okay,” I said, facing her as she sipped on her sugar-drink. “You want to sleep with a superhero before midnight, but you’re not going to tell me why. Am I right?”

  She nodded, her beautiful eyes staring at me.

  “And I’m the superhero that Dave sort of picked out of a hat for you, right?”

  This time she nodded a little slower. From what I could tell, that wasn’t the complete truth, but I was getting close.

  “You didn’t even know I existed before Dave mentioned my name, did you?”

  She shook her head this time, still saying nothing.

/>   So I was just a convenient superhero, doing nothing on Christmas Eve but playing poker. This was making me a little angry, I had to admit.

  “And I assume this is what you really look like, that you don’t have AIDs, and you don’t want to get pregnant.”

  “This is what I really look like,” she said, spreading her arms, which gave me a clear view of her assets just above the table, “No magic, no nothing. I don’t have any diseases, and I will never have kids.”

  “Yet right now you want to check into a hotel room and have sex with me?”

  “I already have a room,” she said, smiling at me.

  Damn, if this woman was just a half-an-ounce less beautiful, had a fraction less fantastic smile, and didn’t have such perfect skin, I wouldn’t be having any problem. I’d be telling her it was nice meeting her and move on to the poker room.

  But it was hard for any mortal man, superhero or not, to turn down an offer of sex from a goddess-like woman.

  Then I realized what word had gone through my head.

  Goddess.

  No wonder she had access to Dave. This woman was one of the Gambling Gods.

  Oh, shit! Now what should I do?

  Sleeping with a Gambling God can only cause trouble. I’ve heard that a dozen times over the years.

  But not sleeping with a Gambling God in this situation could cause even more troubles. Again I needed more information.

  And I had always felt the best way to get information was directly.

  “Can you tell me more about yourself?” I asked, sipping on my diet coke. “For example, I know you’re one of the gods. Which position do you hold?”

  Her face turned white and she tried to cover it quickly by bending forward and taking another sip of her drink. I’m a poker player. I can read expressions like other people read books. I knew for a fact I had hit the right answer with my little fishing question.

  Finally she looked up at me. “How did you know? And without your superpowers?”

  “You’re dealing with a poker player. How would I not know?”

  She nodded, taking that in. Finally she said, “I guess I can tell you. I’m the Keno Manager.”