Donna Andrews - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

“Stick around,” Krale said. “I’ll have to write you a check.”

The others left, and Krale shook their hands and wished them well. Then he took his time finding his checkbook.

“Some run of cards,” he said.

“You caught a lot of second-best hands,” Taggert said. “Nothing much you can do when that happens but wait for the cards to turn.”

“They never did.”

“There’s always next week.”

“I hate to wait that long,” Krale said. He’d uncapped the pen but had not as yet touched it to the check. “You in a rush to get home?”

“You want to play some more?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Heads up, you mean? Just the two of us?”

Krale made a show of looking to his left and right, then at Taggert. “I don’t see anybody else here,” he said, “so I guess we’re stuck with each other.”

Taggert thought about it. “I’ll just keep these chips, then.”

“Right. And I’ll help myself from the bank.” He did so, stacking the chips in front of him, giving himself a bigger bankroll than Taggert’s. That would help psychologically, he told himself. The player with fewer chips was at a disadvantage, doomed to play with a loser’s mentality. This way he could feel like a winner, and it was only a matter of time before he’d be one.

Taggert didn’t seem awed by Krale’s chips. He rearranged his own stacks, and for some reason the new arrangement made it look to Krale as though there were more of them.

“Same rules?”

Krale nodded. “Except we can forget about the three-raise limit,” he said. “Since there’s just the two of us.”

“Makes sense.”

“How about a drink before we get started?”

“Good idea,” Taggert said.

Krale went to the bar and poured a brandy for each of them. They sat with their drinks, and he suggested they cut for deal, and then his wife walked into the room. She said, “Hi, hon. I hope it went—” and stopped in midsentence when she realized her husband had company.

“Hello, Tina.”

“Mark,” she said. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have come in if I’d known you were still here.”

“What’s the matter, don’t you love me anymore?”

She grinned. “I know better than to interrupt you boys. Poker’s a serious matter.”

“Oh, it’s not all that serious,” Taggert said. “We just pretend it’s serious so that we can keep up our interest in it. Like war or business.”

“I see.”

“Mark’s the big winner,” Krale said, “and he’s giving me a chance to win some of my money back.”

“You’ll probably win it all back,” Taggert said, “and then some.”

“Not unless the cards turn.”

“They always do, sooner or later.”

“Well,” Tina Krale said. “Is it all right if I wish you both good luck?”

When she left the room, Taggert’s eyes lingered on her retreating form. This did not go unnoticed by Krale.

They cut cards to determine who’d deal the first hand, and Krale was high.

“Look at that,” Taggert said. “The cards are turning already.”

But his tone was ironic, and it was clear to Krale that he didn’t believe it. Taggert expected to go on winning for as long as Krale sat across the table from him. As though it wasn’t a matter of luck, or cards, or the breaks of the game. As though it was all predetermined by the character of the players, and winners won while losers lost, and he was a winner as sure as Krale was a loser.

A loser with a big house and a going business and money in the bank. A loser with a beautiful wife.

But a loser all the same.

The big house was mortgaged to the rafters. The money in the bank came to less than the outstanding bills. The going business... well, it was going, all right. Going broke, going to hell in a handbasket, going, barring a miracle, out of business. Going, going, gone.

And the beautiful wife?

Krale took a deep breath and dealt the cards.

Half a dozen rounds in, Taggert dealt and Krale looked at a deuce and six to go with the ten he had showing. Different suits, of course. “Check,” he said, and Taggert shook his head.

“Oh, right,” Krale said. They’d changed the rules to avoid hands that got checked to excess, and whoever was high had to make a first-round bet. “Bet,” he said, unnecessarily, and tossed a chip into the pot.

His next card paired the six. This time he was entitled to check, and did, but Taggert bet, and the pair of sixes kept him in the hand. He kept having enough to call, and the ten he caught on the river gave him two pair, and he knew his tens up were beat but called the last bet anyway, because he had so much in the pot already, and Taggert had kings up and won the hand.

He gathered up the cards, shuffled them. “Maybe we should raise the stakes,” he suggested.

“Sure,” Taggert said. “What do you say we make the raise retroactive?”

“Very funny.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Dick. Why don’t we call it a night?”

“I thought you were going to give me a chance to get even.”

“At this rate, that’ll take awhile.”

“So we’ll raise the stakes.”

“To what?”

“We’ve been playing five and ten. Let’s up it to ten-twenty.”

“Fine with me,” Taggert said.

At first he thought raising the stakes was the charm. He won three small pots in a row, got out of a fourth hand with an early fold, and then, after staying in too long with an unmade hand, caught the king of hearts for a flush while Taggert, who’d held three queens all the way, failed to catch his full house. He bet the hand, too, and pulled in a handsome pot.

“Well played,” Taggert said. Krale glowed, even though he knew he hadn’t really played the hand well. He shouldn’t have stayed long enough to catch that king, and he’d had no business betting into Taggert at the end. He’d been lucky, lucky to catch the king, lucky that Taggert hadn’t filled.

But wasn’t that as good as playing smart? In fact, wasn’t it better? Because it meant that the cards were turning, that his luck was returning, and that he could get even and then some. Wouldn’t it be nice if the evening ended with Taggert writing a check to him instead of the other way around?

Taggert yawned. Because he was tired? Or because he wanted to appear tired, so he’d have an excuse to end the game?

“Hang on a sec,” Krale said.

He left without an explanation and came back a few minutes later with a glass of brandy for each of them. “A little pick-me-up,” he said. “And how do you take your coffee? Tina’s making a fresh pot.”

“I don’t like to drink coffee after dinner,” Taggert said. “It screws up my sleeping.”

“I find they smooth one another out,” Krale said. “The coffee and the brandy. Keeps you awake while you’re at the table, then lets you sleep like a baby when you get home.”

“And in the morning?”

“You wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to do battle.”

Taggert raised an eyebrow. “You’ve made a study of this,” he said.

“Personal observation,” he said, “along with an exhaustive study of the available literature.” He raised his glass, and Taggert, after a moment, raised his.

You had to expect the occasional setback. You couldn’t sit there and win every hand. But this one hurt.

He’d started with nines rolled up, two down and one up, trip nines, gorgeous cards. And he’d nursed them along, played them just right, while Taggert got enough of a diamond flush to keep him in the hand. And on sixth street Krale stopped caring about Taggert’s diamonds, because he caught a pair for the five he had showing, which gave him a full house, so who cared if Taggert had his flush?