Roy Glenn - In A Cold Sweat

“I’ll get changed,” Mystique said quickly and walked away.

That’s how we were together. We didn’t talk much, a choice on my part, although Mystique does have a tendency to babble incoherently after she’s cum a few times. But the more time we spend fuckin’, the more time we spend talking. The more we talk, the more I realize that she’s not just a Cassandra look a like. Maria Harrow was just cool to be around. She’s someone that seems to genuinely like me, but you never really know with women these days. It ain’t like she don’t know who I am and the kind of money I have. She could see the big picture and be positioning herself for the long haul. But from what I could tell, she’s a nice person, one that I’m starting to like, and I don’t want to like anybody.

Not now.

Jackie arrived at the gambling house a little before eleven that night. It was to be her second night playing in the big game. The first night went relatively well for the most part. She hadn’t come away the big winner yet, but she had left there each night with more money than she walked in with.

It wasn’t always like that for Jackie. There was a time when she regularly lost money. That changed the night Mike Black told her about her game. “When you got money sittin’ in front of you, you make reckless bets and when you lose, you try to laugh it off, like it’s only money,” he told her that night, after watching her lose a big pot.

“That’s me,” Jackie laughed, she knew it was true.

“You chase the big pots. Greedy. And you chase them with weak hands and since we already talked about your inability to bluff, that makes you reckless and greedy.”

“Damn,” Jackie said slowly. “You really have been watching me.”

“Watching you lose, Jackie. Watching you lose money to me.” From that moment on, Jackie changed her approach to the game.

That night she was dressed in a red leather jumpsuit that hugged her curves, and made every man and a few of the working women in attendance, stop and take notice. “You lookin’ good tonight there miss lady,” Philbert Cunningham said. He was a divorce lawyer and a regular at the house. Cunningham considered himself a ladies man and had a reputation for seducing many of his female clients. He had been on Jackie since she sat down at the table that first night.

“Thank you, Mr. C,” Jackie said and took a seat next to Earl, the dealer.

“You must think them tight-ass outfits gonna throw me off my game,” Harold Wade said. He and his brother Stanley owned a construction company. They too were regulars, but Harold was there damn near every night, while his brother, who had a wife and children, only came once a week.

“You getting in now or you gonna wait ’til next hand?” Sonny Edwards barked. Since he had been hemorrhaging money since he walked in, he wasn’t in a good mood. Sonny was an older gentlemen; he was retired but refused to say from what.

“I’m in, Sonny. What’s the big blind?” Jackie asked as she organized her chips. The game was Texas Hold ’Em and before the game starts, the two players post blind bets. They're called blinds because they are made before the players see any cards. The blinds ensure that there is some money in the pot to play for as the game starts.

“Ten Grand,” Mr. C told Jackie. He posted the small blind of five thousand dollars, while Sonny put up the ten thousand as the big blind. Jackie put up ten grand to get in and the game began.

As the night wore on, Jackie found herself having a good night. She’d racked in a few big pots and was way ahead that evening. The Flop, a term used for the three 'community' cards that are dealt face up on the table, were the ace of hearts, the eight of spades, the six of spades. The fourth community or turn card, was the ace of spades. Jackie was holding the ace of clubs and the six of hearts and she was feeling good about the two pair of aces she was looking at, and raised the bet by twenty thousand dollars.

Harold Ware played with his chips and stared across the table at Jackie trying to get a feel for whether she was buffing. Then he smiled and called her bet. At that point there was more than two hundred thousand dollars on the table.

The River, the final community card, was dealt. “Ace of spades,” the dealer said.

“Twenty,” Mr. C uttered.

Sonny flipped up his hole cards and took a peek. “I raise thirty.”

“The bet is fifty to you, Jackie,” the dealer said.

Full house, got ’em , Jackie thought and made her bet. “Seventy-five,” she pushed her chips in and waited for the showdown.

“Well now, Jackie, I’ma have to call you on that one,” Harold said and pushed his chips forward.

“Showdown folks,” the dealer said.

Mr. C turned over his cards and pushed them toward the dealer and he arranged the cards with the community cards. “King and queen of spades. A flush,” the dealer said and turned to Sonny.

He smiled a very satisfied smile and flipped over his cards. The dealer racked the two and eight of clubs. “Full House; eights full of aces. To you, Jackie.”

Jackie looked at the four hundred thousand dollars in front of her and was sure that it was hers. Very slowly, Jackie pushed forward her cards. “Ace of clubs, six of hearts. A higher full house.”

All eyes in the room were now on Harold Ware. He pushed his cards face down to the dealer. “Five and seven of spades. A straight flush, four to the eight. Mr. Ware wins.”

Jackie cursed and gathered together what was left of her chips. Jackie backed away from the table and stood up.

“You ain’t leavin’, are you, sweetie,” Harold said to her.

“Not as long as you got all that money sittin’ in front of you. You don’t have to worry. I’ll be back in a minute to take some of it,” Jackie assured him and headed for the bar.

The bartender had a shot of Hennessy waiting for her when she got there. Jackie didn’t like drinking at the table. She thought it was too much of a distraction. It was more important to stay focused. While she sipped her drink, Jackie tried to figure the odds on Harold Ware having a straight flush. Lately, she’d been giving a lot of thought to what Travis said about planning. If then else. Put simply, if this happens, then do this, if that ain’t workin’, what else can you do . Could she really apply that same logic to poker? Could she plan a game?

No . Playing poker was more a matter of probabilities, the chance that something is likely to happen and drawing conclusions about the likelihood of those events. The theory was something she would work on at some other time.

Right now, she had a mission, and she had no intention of blowing it. Black told her to keep an eye on Mylo for him and that’s what she was gonna do. During her little breaks from the game, Jackie had done her best, which wasn’t very good, to plant listening devices around the house. Most didn’t work at all, and those that did had a lot of static. When Jackie told Monika about it, she laughed and promised to come with her one night and clean up her work.

Jackie was about to return to the game when Frank Sparrow, the middleweight champion of the world, came through the door with two other men. The entire mood of the room changed at that moment.

In the short time that she’d been playing there, Jackie had heard all sorts of stories about Sparrow. He was a big-time poker player, who liked to throw around money and usually lost big every time he came in the place. Everybody was glad to see Frank Sparrow.

Sparrow had grown up in Black’s neighborhood and was loyal to Black for helping support his career. Jackie couldn’t wait to get him at the table and decided to wait until he sat down to reclaim her seat. In the meantime, she ordered another drink and sought out a spot to observe the champ and how Mylo, who had just come out of the office, interacted with him.