The Poker Report

2/14/02

"The God’s Honest Truth Since 2001"

It was sunny on Tuesday but by Wednesday the fog had rolled in. On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I cleared my slate before the Valentine’s Day, there’ll be no presents this year. And on Tuesday night the regulars came over for a friendly game of poker, which turned into something that wasn’t poker at all.

The first thing I did on Tuesday for poker night was make Jon a fried egg sandwich. Then we started to play. I was winning big, Texas Hold ‘Em, even Omaha. I was playing like a pro. I had chips for days. In Omaha you can take them high and low. The way we play the cards talk, straights and flushes play, but you can’t have anything lower than an eight in your low hand. And no pairs, pairs are out of the question. In Hold 'Em my king was persistent.

Then the girls showed up in fancy clothes with a rum cake. Abby’s a girl too. Jensen decided he would have a cigar. So we slowed down the game and we all had warm slices of cake stuffed with so much booze it burned the back of your throat. Then the girls left and the apartment was dark again.

"What happened?" I asked.

Sometimes when the light is a certain way and long tall Cooney leans back in his chair it seems like he is lit from beneath, the light circling beneath his scraggly cornfed chin and running up the sides of his cheeks. And when he smiles a tiny hint of red just beneath his eyes. It’s like he was on fire and was happy about it. And his long fingers intertwine across his thin stomach and the tin foil of the burrito that he finished, the green juice from his dinner still dripping off his whiskers. And then he called Clue.

And we played Clue. Donahue also called Clue. And then Jon called Clue, which is not a poker game at all. Just a trump game, a high rent version of hearts, and I was sitting just to the left of Jon, and I hadn’t figured something out yet, something that I would figure out later, after it was too late, which is the way it often is with strategy and insight, a thing of the past, something you could of used once, if you had the right tool. So I was just to the left of Jon when he called Clue and his arms retracted into his ribs and there were just these hands dangling off of his chest and Cooney with his flaming hat and Jensen with his long white teeth. And I said, "Didn’t I make you a sandwich?"

Then I called Clue, because I had to at that point, and I was sure wishing the girls were around, with their angelic cheeks. And I think if I had to point to where everything went wrong it would have to be just after I was leaning over the bannister in the hallway waving to Karina and Fox as they left for work and other obligations, asking them if they couldn’t just stay a little longer, their faces full of smiles and hopes for the future. It was as if they had stopped by to give me one chance and I had squandered it. And I couldn’t will them to stay, there was just the rum cake which was soft and good like a big white cloud. Of course Abby is a girl too, and Abby stayed. But that didn’t seem to help me none.

It wasn’t long after I called Clue that we all broke up for the night and it was time to pay people there due and there was a stream of molten lava running beneath my mattress in the corner that turned out to just be a half empty crushed beer can left beneath my pillow by Eric Jensen. And Jensen, Donahue, and I talked about going biking the next day in sunny Palo Alto but of course that was the day it rained. And letters were flooding my inbox, everybody wanted to know what happened Tuesday night. Why hadn’t I written a poker report? And I asked them the same. Cooney said he wanted the world to know the truth. He said I could be his messenger and then I could have half of his kingdom. But for me, I’m still trying to piece it together. I suppose more happened on Tuesday than any of us can account for. It was only eleven p.m. when it ended and I watched the sky burn for a bit. Then I changed my sheets and my pillow cases and just tried to get some sleep.

Stephen Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report