Smith's Monthly #7 Page 8

  Now, after the six years, she had aged slightly, but was still a stunning beauty.

  “So, who are you and what the hell are you doing here?” she asked, picking up a piece of pizza.

  She bit into the pizza, watching him with her intense, green eyes.

  “My name’s Nick,” he said. “I’m a writer here researching a new book on the secrets of people living in this building. Including Donna Hayman, the woman who was supposed to be living in this apartment at this point in time.”

  “Welcome to her apartment,” Nancy said, looking disgusted. “Trust me, she’s not home and she has no real secrets, unless you call dying her hair and being behind on her credit cards a secret.”

  Then she laughed, the sound husky and odd in a weird way. She indicated that he should sit down and have some pizza. “Might as well get comfortable. It does look like you stumbled on a really big secret in this apartment.”

  He smiled and let himself relax a little. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  He took the offered piece of rich-smelling pizza and carefully bit into it. It tasted even better than it smelled, if that was possible.

  For the next thirty minutes, while they finished off the pizza, they talked and laughed about all sorts of things, and he got the short version of the events that put her in this jail cell.

  All he kept thinking was how fantastically beautiful she was, how lucky he was to have found her, and how much more enjoyable the last few weeks of his research trip was going to be. He should have started at the top floor instead of the bottom floor. He would have found her ten months ago.

  After he told her about a few of the other residents in the building, she smiled and sighed. “I like you, Nick. It’s going to be good to have company for the last two years of my sentence.”

  “I only wish,” he said, laughing. “I’ve only got two weeks left on my research time, although I might be able to extend a month or two before hitting my recall button.”

  The emergency recall button, and the main one in his time bubble in the lobby, were the only way anyone from his present could track him to this moment and bring him back. He had been warned that if something happened to those two buttons, there would be no finding him.

  She looked at him, a puzzled frown wrinkling her wonderful face. Then sadly she shook her head. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  She pointed to the door. “Your recall button is blocked in here. Go ahead, try to leave.”

  He stared at her, again trying to absorb her words. He then glanced back at the shattered wooden door that he had stepped through and the hallway beyond. There were two other shattered doors he had gone into earlier in the week.

  “This is a prison, remember,” she said, softly. “No one leaves here until they call me back when my time is up. It is why I never crashed through that door and explored the city.”

  “You don’t have the special implants to do so,” he said, pushing the panic he was feeling down. Suddenly the pizza wasn’t settling so well in his stomach. “You would not have been able to move through the air out there.”

  “Of course I have them,” she said, sadness filling her eyes. “Every prisoner has them just in case something goes wrong with the bubble. We also have special recall buttons that will only go through the bubble when our time is served.”

  He shook his head and stood and headed for the shattered front door to the apartment. She couldn’t be right. She was just pulling some sort of sick joke on him.

  As he reached the door, he started to step through the opening and his leg banged into what felt like a very hard surface. Pain shot up his leg and he grabbed his knee for a moment. There didn’t seem to be anything in his way, yet there was something there.

  “Force field around the bubble,” she said from behind him, her voice soft. “A prison far more effective than any cell invented. And it will remain in place for just over two more years.”

  “Sorry, got to go,” he said, his voice again high and showing the panic he felt. He pushed his emergency recall button and waited for the tingling feeling of the time travel kicking in.

  Nothing.

  He just stood there, with a former supermodel staring sadly at him. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere, at least for two years and twelve days.

  But at least he had a beautiful supermodel to keep him company.

  ***

  Six months later, he was still sleeping on the couch.

  Day after day of those six months he had stared at that stupid sign on the gumball machine.

  Wait for the Coin to Drop.

  He had come to find the secrets of the residents of an apartment building. And he had done just that.

  It seemed the resident he had ended up trapped with had enough secrets to fill a dozen books. To start off with, she was bulimic, with no desire at all to help herself do anything else. In the small three-room apartment, the sounds of her forcing herself to throw up after every meal soon went from worrisome to completely revolting.

  She had told him, on the second night, when he made a pass at her, that she had once been a man, had had the operation, and now hated everything to do with men. In fact, during the second month of his time with her, she had told him that he disgusted her.

  It seemed that everything about her was fake. She took off her small breasts every night and hung them with her blonde wig on the wall beside her bed.

  Worst of all, she was the most shallow human being he could have ever imagined in even a horror novel. The only topic of conversation that was allowed was her looks and her career and if she could save her career when she returned. She wondered if the world will have forgiven her “little mistake” as she called it.

  She had quit school in the tenth grade and seemed proud of that fact. She had brought nothing to read and claimed that she had never read a book, ever, in her entire adult life. And there wasn’t a thing he could use to write on in the entire prison cell. What little bit of writing he managed to do was to fill the last of his notes in the pad he kept with him each day before it ran out of power.

  Every day Nancy spent hours and hours and hours in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror.

  Three small rooms filled with secrets. They had become impossibly small within the first week and downright tiny by the end of the first month. Plus he had no clothes to wear besides what he had been wearing, so his main chore was to cook himself something to eat twice a day and do laundry every third day.

  The rest of the time he just lay on the couch and stared at the sign on the gumball machine sitting beside the open door that promised his freedom, yet never brought it.

  The gumball machine became the symbol of his life.

  Wait for the Coin to Drop.

  He was trapped in a moment in time with the secrets he had uncovered, the same type of moment that existed when a child waited for the coin to drop in the gumball machine to deliver the promised reward.

  USA Today bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith, takes you into his first full-length novel featuring his most popular character, Poker Boy.

  Set in 2004, the last year the World Series of Poker took place at Binions Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas, Poker Boy meets the love of his life and forms the team of superheroes and gods that will save the world many times over in the coming years.

  But first, he and his new team must save all of gambling and over fifty lives, from the evil ghost slots. And not get killed in the process.

  THE SLOTS OF SATURN

  A Poker Boy Novel

  Note to the readers:

  This novel is the origin of Poker Boy’s team. The year is 2004

  and Poker Boy has only been a superhero for less than four years.

  Chapter One

  A SUPERHERO ARRIVES

  I LOVE CASINOS. Always have.

  I mean I truly love them, like some people enjoy sitting beside a calm mountain lake. Walking into a casino, it feels like I have stepped on an ocean beach on a warm evening with no wind
, combined with the at-home feel of sitting by a fire, under a nice reading light, with a warm drink and a good book.

  I admit, casinos are loud, with both machine and people noises, and are designed by experts to take a person’s money. Yet every time I step through the door into a casino, either in Vegas, Atlantic City, or in timbuck-six North Dakota, I know I am home, that I am safe, that I am in control of my surroundings.

  As Poker Boy, when I am in a casino, I also have my superpowers. I have to be honest that I love that feeling as well.

  My superpowers, which are needed by definition to be a superhero, are varied. I have still not explored them all. Sometimes even I am surprised at what I can do.

  As I stepped through the side door of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino and Hotel in downtown Las Vegas, I walked right into the center of at least forty poker tables. I knew I had once again found my own little slice of heaven. I could feel the power flowing through me. My muscles, tense and tight from the long cab ride, relaxed as if rubbed by a Swedish hot-rub expert.

  And trust me, Heidi, my Swedish hot-rub expert from two Vegas trips back, could relax the man of steel down into a pool of metal. Those fingers of hers were secret weapons and, I know for a fact and from wonderful memory, that she turned Poker Boy into Go Fish Man in two minutes.

  I stopped and just took a deep breath of the smoke-tainted air of the old casino, filling my lungs with the poisons that killed others, but gave me strength.

  Stopping just inside a casino front door was a habit of mine. Every time I went into a new casino, or an old one like the Horseshoe, I would just stop inside the door and look around, giving myself a few seconds to enjoy the feel. As Poker Boy, I get a lot of good feelings, especially when I have helped someone, but there are never enough of those good feelings in life, so I take my joys where I can get them. And stopping inside a casino door and just looking around was one of my joys in life.

  Today, everything around me looked like a standard day in casino world.

  On my right were some of the live poker games, on my left the overflow part of the tournament area, now with all the tables empty. The main desk for the hotel was beyond all the tables, and I had to get there by sort of following the yellow brick road of the pattern on the carpet, through the tables, down between the railings along the poker tables, and then through the ropes in the open area in front of the hotel desk.

  Those ropes that guard the front desks of most hotels always made me feel like a cow being herded to the guy with the hammer who would hit me, put me out of my misery, and turn my body into prime rib and flank steaks. Some hotels had almost done that to me in the past.

  There wasn’t even anyone waiting in line to check in. Maybe I could avoid the ropes altogether and just go for the hammer.

  I put my head down and moved toward the front desk, following the pattern on the carpet, hoping I could get checked in and to my room before anyone knew I was here. Even superheroes needed time to unwind from the traveling and the cab ride from the airport.

  Actually, I was looking forward to taking a nap.

  I somehow made it all the way to the front desk without being recognized. Granted, I am really not that famous, in a strict sense of the word. But I am often recognized across a crowded casino by someone who wants my help, like a dog in need to pee spotting a tree. I was the tree, and thankfully, at the moment, there were no dogs.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the nice-looking woman behind the front desk said as I stepped up to the polished wood counter.

  I had cut inside the ropes like I knew what I was doing, and was actually feeling a little proud of myself at that moment. Avoiding front desk rope lines, combined with the flowing power of a casino around me, could sometimes be a heady experience. I savored the moment, then looked up at the woman who had greeted me.

  Her smile actually included her eyes as she leaned forward a little. And what eyes they were. I had an out-of-body experience as I studied them.

  Brown, large, and round, with the light over the front desk giving them a little twinkle. I could stare into those eyes forever, but I knew I shouldn’t.

  Yet I wanted to.

  I knew I shouldn’t.

  Stare.

  I shouldn’t.

  I floated there, arguing with myself, until I finally returned to my body and somehow managed to look at the rest of her.

  She had long brown hair pulled back into a flowing ponytail, a smile that showed perfect teeth, and skin that was pleasantly tan. She wore the Horseshoe employee brown jacket and white blouse in such a way as to somehow make the dull outfit look sexy.

  Of course, a woman with those eyes and that smile could make burlap look sexy as far as I was concerned, so my astute powers of perception on her uniform was more than likely skewed by my own interests.

  “Checking in,” I managed to say, even though my throat was suddenly dry.

  “Here for the tournament?” she asked, her smile not fading.

  “I am,” I said. “That obvious?”

  “Poker players do have a look about them,” she said, laughing.

  Her laugh was so fine, so perfectly tuned that it matched her smile, her eyes, her sexy look. The Horseshoe sure had a way of greeting a poker player. I wanted to stand on the counter, shout “Poker Boy is here to save you!” and jump her right there.

  I refrained, but I had no doubt I was in love.

  Actually, more accurately, lust.

  I was in lust with Miss Brown-eyes behind the front desk. Nothing unusual, but very enjoyable.

  It was good to be back in a casino.

  “Your name, sir?” the beautiful woman—who I shall forever think of as Brown-eyes until I learned her name—asked.

  She stood in a non-threatening manner behind the front desk of the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel, her fingers poised over the keyboard of her computer. I would have much rather had those fingers poised over me, but since she was about to type my name with those wonderful hands, I couldn’t complain too much.

  “Conway Moore,” I said, giving her one of the fake names I had been using since I had become Poker Boy.

  Her fingers stroked my name into her computer, her head nodding slightly.

  I watched, mesmerized as her hands worked.

  I often got mesmerized by a woman’s hands. It only becomes a problem when a woman is playing with her chips in a poker game. I then have to force myself to stare down at my own chips at that point, or into the eyes of the other players to break the spell.

  I would have loved to have told this woman behind the desk that my name was Poker Boy, but Poker Boy wasn’t the name I had made the reservation under, so it would have just confused the issue.

  Poker Boy was my superhero name, and Conway Moore was the other part of my superhero name, used when I needed to do regular world things like check into a hotel, sign into a poker tournament, rent a car, that sort of thing.

  Actually, Conway Moore wasn’t the name I was born with. I had known Poker Boy was going to need a secret identity to get by in the world. Conway seemed like a good name. Conway was also a character thought up by James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizons. I liked the book, so I borrowed the name for my secret identity.

  At first, I thought about just using Conway as both my first and last names, then the last name of Moore came from a poker game like a hundred dollar bill laying in the parking lot.

  Shortly after I became Poker Boy, some guy in a ten-twenty hold-em game accused me of never getting enough of his money. I don’t remember what casino I was in, but I do remember that he said that all I wanted was more and more. I had to agree, since he was one of the worst poker players ever to flash a large roll of bills in front of me. As long as he sat there at the table and pulled out more bills, I sat there and took his money. Thus was the nature of poker.

  And besides, a superhero had to eat.

  On the way back to my room hours later, I kept thinking about how he just repeated “More and more and more.” I decided that
would be my last name. I changed the spelling of “more” to Moore to make it seem name-like. And thus, my secret identity of Conway Moore was born, both from the heart of a literary novel and the sweat of a poker game.

  Perfect secret identity for Poker Boy.

  “Here is your key, Mr. Moore,” the woman said, sliding the paper packet with the plastic key toward me. I reached for it and her hand brushed mine.

  I saw stars!

  I saw the gambling gods!

  I saw a royal flush against four aces, all in that order.

  “I hope you have a good stay,” she said. “And good luck in the tournaments.”

  Her smile was in full force, her wonderful eyes controlling me like a well-trained seal that could bark and balance a ball on its nose on command.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say without barking or balancing a ball.

  Then I turned and tripped over my luggage.

  Somehow, I managed to miss getting tangled in the front desk rope maze as I fell.

  That floor may have been carpeted, and I may be a superhero, but it was still hard, and it still hurt.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Moore?” she asked, a frown of worry crossing her beautiful face, making it beautiful in a different way. She leaned over the desk and looked down at me like an angel, the light behind her head giving her a halo.

  I thought of lying there, staring at her until she floated over to help me up, then I thought better of it.

  I sprang to my feet.

  “I’m fine,” I said, pretending to laugh it off.

  I had heard that superheroes always spring back to their feet when knocked down, and I sure didn’t want to be an exception to the rule in the superhero world, even when the fall was caused by my inability to not be consumed by a pretty woman.