Calling Fold

"Bid raised and matched. You - ma'am, do you call or raise?"
She looks once more at the cards. She already knows all the patterns embossed on the cardboard, but one more glance, just one more glance, in a different shadow of the green bar lamp may change their appearance....Besides, it's another way to avoid looking into all the dark eyes of the other remaining players.

There on the table is quite a high-stakes bid. All the dollar chips seem already swallowed up by the ripped and crumbled felt; that curls in boiled blemishes of where cigarillos and cigars were burned in passion, and there's oily gasoline-black leather skin underneath patches where it was rubbed so hard that it cleanly broke into oblivion. And she knows if she pressed her nose to it just then, it would reek so very sourly, but also smell so very much like polished farmwoods.

Instead, she takes a heavy sigh - one of those rare breathes where the lungs seem to process and export the pain.
But the lamp, and the cigarillo smoke she still craves is burning her eyes....
"I fold." and with a scratchy pshwooshh, pulls up her bustle and her heavy gown - curtsies, just enough that the dealer follows the arrow her white breasts make southward, and leaves the table.

"It wasn't her game because..." go the whispers,
in various forms of sympathy or apathy of the expert player. She's won several titles before this damned ferryboat tournament...and there were still rumors afloat of cards held up her beautiful sleeves in past games.
But she walked from the room with poise, and her head held down...as behind her - the players left squinted into each other's eyes, and leaned into the table and all her precious chips.

"It wasn't her game" 
"It wasn't her game" 
 "It wasn't her..."

"It just wasn't my game -" she whispered in a raspy sensual tone and turning the key to her compartment-directly above the poker floor. "I'm sorry Dealer, I sat down at the wrong table. My cards were ok. enough-sure I'd had better once-but I was coming off a win, and played with what I got. I knew the players I was up against-damn, I knew their strategies and their history so well....Damn, damn damn..." she cursed to the roars of the ferry wheel rumbling in the distance for a little while...

But then, as any great poker player does-she went back to the cards,
and the stakes,
and the way she'd conned to the high-stakes round.
The cards - had been a house.
A Full House, in the red suite.
They had been shit-for-wits marvelous cards.
But she had always played based on where the deck was spread.

She knew the pair that made up either side of her each held Queen of Hearts in dark suites - a mucky, bad omen.
And the Joker she'd somehow pulled in the first round had made her cautious of this shuffled deck.
Then there was the player directly across-who'd hopped on board just barely in time. He held deuce Aces, but she knew he had poorly played magnificient cards on memorable occasions.

She had a marvelous hand.
And funny, they were held so tight-you'd never know if they were a pair of fours or a deck of Kings.


They never knew.
The game went on, on that windy, windy night on the River. It was hard to decipher who won; quite a scandal erupted when all hands were laid on the green felt finally. The newspapers all reported different outcomes.

But the woman upstairs knew how the deck was laid.
And it wasn't her game.




...{Here marks the Anniversary of BB! 2 YEARS and counting! Thanks to my wonderful readers! It all started with THIS}