Three

 

She waved her arm around at the cavern. “You’re in my world now.”

I said nothing.

She shifted slightly, still smiling at me, still learning forward trying to get me to look at her fake assets.

I just stared at her face, into her eyes, like I stared at any poker player who tried to make a move on me. And I made sure I kept us firmly planted between seconds of time.

After a long moment of me staring at her she shifted slightly again, then turned to stare back, her fake smile frozen on her face.

I could tell I was getting to her. But I still had no idea what to do to get this table and all the men around it back into the Mirage poker room. I needed some answers.

“So what do you want me for?” I asked. “Why these guys?”

“Customers,” she said. “Got to keep the operation running.”

“No winning allowed down there,” I said, indicating the tables frozen below us in the cavern.

She smiled again, and for the first time the smile reached her dark eyes. “Never.”

Right at that moment I knew I had her. Just like I did in any tournament before making an all-in bet, I went quickly back over what had gone on before.

She’d been pulling a scam on the first hand after sitting down, and had gotten impatient to take the table down into her own world. And I’m sure there was a reason she was impatient.

Then I realized why. If we had reached the floor of the cavern in hell, I’m sure I would have lost the hand we were playing. She would have been able to change her cards into pocket fours, giving her quad fours, the only cards that would beat my kings-full in this hand. That’s why she was in a hurry to get the table down. She wasn’t used to losing and she was going to lose the first hand.

But we hadn’t reached the floor of the cavern yet. And I could still see the Mirage poker room outlined around us. That meant, I was sure, that real world rules played. That Laverne and Stan were still with me in spirit.

I leaned forward. “Any of these men actually due to arrive in your world today?”

She glanced around at the frozen faces staring at her chest. “No.”

“So then you’re basically after me. Right?”

She said nothing, but I could tell from her eyes that I was right. I also knew without a doubt I wasn’t ever destined to go in this direction after I died. Besides, from what I understood, superheroes lived a long time, so I had no idea how long in the future any question about this issue was going to be.

“Why go after a superhero?” I asked.

She smiled. “Challenge.”

“It must be getting dull in Gambling Hell.”

She only shrugged and smiled.

I had played her right into my hand and there was no point in rubbing salt into a wound any more, even if the person was from Gambling Hell and didn’t know they were even wounded yet. So instead I smiled at her for a few moments longer, just to get her squirming.

Then I said, “Well, if you like a challenge, how about we finish this hand to see which direction this table is going? I win the hand we go up, back to the Mirage and you go somewhere else to play. You win, we go down, and I’ll go with you for a while. Play your game.”

The moment I put it back on the cards I caught a slight, very slight hint of panic cross her face. She hid it well, but I still saw it. I knew I had her. She had a good hand, but she didn’t have the nut hand.

“Well, let us go so the dealer can call the hand,” she said.

“No,” I said, not wanting this table to get any closer to that cavern floor. “Right here, right now. No more bets. We roll the cards and see who wins. Otherwise I call in Stan and he puts this table back where it belongs and you lose the chance of getting these players and me as your toys.”

Heidi stared at me, taking her turn trying to read me. She was good, of that I had no doubt. But the best players in the world had tried to put reads on me for years without luck. No chance a simple Denizen from Gambling Hell could do it.

Finally she nodded. “You have a bet.”

“I win,” I said, making the bet clear, “the table goes back to the Mirage and you leave. You win, I release the table and we play in your world for a while.”

“Those are the stakes,” she said.

With that she flipped over pocket aces.

“Nice hand,” I said.

And then I did something I never do in real life because it just annoys me and every other player. I hesitated in turning over my cards. It’s called slow-rolling and it is the worst thing any player can do. But I did it anyway, just to get under Heidi’s skin, just to give her a brief moment when she thought she had won. Sort of a little taste of her own hell is the way I figured it.

“Pocket kings,” I said, flipping my cards onto the table face up in front of me. “Kings-full.”

For a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of what Heidi really looked like under all that fake skin and large breasts. And let me tell you, she was one ugly human being. Nightmare ugly.

She stood, pushing her chair back and I let us go back to normal time at the same moment.

Suddenly the noise from the Mirage poker room pounded in around us. The men at the table were suddenly very surprised that Heidi was standing, and that our cards were showing without a final round of betting.

“Nice playing with you,” she said, staring at me. Then without her false smile, she bent over and picked up her chips, giving a number of the men at the table a real show before turning and stamping off.

“What just happened there?” the dealer asked as he slid the pile of chips in the middle of the table toward me.

I shrugged. “Sore loser.”

One of the men who had gotten the best show from her picking up her chips laughed. “She bends over like that a few more times and she can take all my money.”

“Always be careful what you ask for,” I said. “You never know where you might end up.”

Everyone around the table laughed and the mood shifted back to fun game of serious poker, playing for money instead of souls.