The Hand You're Dealt

by Paul Volponi

  Our last date was a week before Christmas. I took Audra to the big multiplex over in Culverton by bus. I had my arm around her through the whole flick, and everything was going great. Then, after the show, Audra wanted to walk through one of the huge department stores in the mall there. She saw a sweater she liked and went to try it on. I’d only moved over an aisle or two from where she left me, to look at the sporting goods section. But it was a Saturday night and the store was packed solid with people shopping. And when Audra came out of the changing room, she missed me. For the next hour, we walked around that huge store trying to find each other. I even called her name out a half dozen times, but it was no use. I just kept covering the same ground, over and over. Finally I heard my name paged over the loudspeaker and walked over to the customer service station feeling like a lost little kid.

  When I got there, Audra was standing with her arms folded in front of her, annoyed as anything.

  “I was just going in circles, looking for you,” she said. “Where did you go?”

  “I was lookin’ for you the same,” I answered, trying to walk an even line.

  “Well, maybe if you stood in one spot, I’d have found you,” she said, frustrated.

  Then we missed the last bus back to Caldwell, and Audra had to call her mother to come pick us up. They dropped me off at my house, and I didn’t come close to getting a kiss good night.

  “I’ll pick you up tonight at eight,” I said, smooth, walking up to Audra.

  “Sure. But you know the dance starts at seven, right?” she asked.

  I looked her in the eye and answered, “If you’re gonna be a professional model, you’re gonna have to learn how to make an entrance—it’s called being fashionably late.”

  “I don’t know ’bout all that,” she said with a laugh, following me as I started toward the door. “Modeling’s just one dream of mine. I’m studying architecture and design next year at Cal State. I really wanna build houses—maybe skyscrapers someday.”

  “My dad used to build houses out of cards, really great ones—three and four levels high. He showed me lots of secrets how to do it too,” I said without thinking.

  Soon as the words came out of my mouth, I thought how much I’d sounded like a stupid kid and wished I could take them back.

  But Audra smiled and said, “I love learnin’ stuff like that.”

  And for a second I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be.

  “Look, I know I turned you down a couple of times to go out again,” she said, low and soft. “I’m sorry if I seemed stuck-up. I’m not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I just missed what I’m seeing in you now. But you seem different—like you can do anything. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I always liked you. And I’m really looking forward to tonight.”

  “No big deal,” I said, playing it off the best I could. “That was then. This is now.”

  “Oh, and guess what?” she said, rolling her eyes. “I found out that Ms. Harnish is gonna be one of the school chaperones at the dance. Lucky us.”

  I just let out a long breath at the news.

  We got outside and I walked right up to the Mercedes, putting the key in the door.

  “No way,” Audra said with her eyes wide. “Is this what you’re drivin’ tonight? He’s letting you take it?”

  Instead of answering, I kissed her on the cheek, making sure to catch the corner of her lips.

  Then I climbed inside the car and said, “Remember, eight o’clock.”

  And I drove off feeling every one of those 238 horses under the hood.

  Six blocks later, I saw Cassidy driving his old clunker. I roared right up on his tail and blasted the horn. He must have thought I was Father Dineros, because he moved over quick to let me pass. But I pulled up alongside him and shouted, “Keep that rollin’ piece of shit out of my way!”

  We both pulled over into the parking lot outside 7-Eleven.

  “Where’s Father Money? You got him tied up in the trunk or what?” asked Cassidy.

  “Nope,” I said, sucking my teeth at him. “It’s all mine till Sunday morning. No strings.”

  “You got a date lined up?” Cassidy came back.

  “Takin’ Audra to the senior dance,” I said.

  “I wasn’t even goin’ to that thing. Maybe this could put a new light on it,” he said, feeling me out. “That backseat’s big enough. How ’bout me and my girl go with you two, and we make it up to Sands Point after?”

  I wasn’t about to tell Cassidy that Father Dineros wouldn’t let me leave Caldwell with his car.

  “Meet us at the dance, and we’ll see how it goes,” I told him. “But I can’t make any promises. Audra might want her own private time with me.”

  Then, with a straight face, I asked him how Abbott’s math final went.

  “At least I can enjoy myself till the scores get posted Monday morning,” he answered. “After that, it’s gonna be a summer filled with that freak and his numbers.”

  I shook my head, like his problem was mine. But he didn’t ask about how the test went for me.

  “Maybe I’ll see you tonight,” I said, getting back behind the wheel.

  Then I pulled away, watching Cassidy get smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

  The tournament started at five thirty, and I showed up wearing my good suit for the dance. There was a mob of players waiting for the elevator, so I took the stairs, and Buddha was right behind me.

  “Too many pairs of shades down there,” Buddha said. “Looks like a convention of blind men without the Seeing Eye dogs.”

  I laughed out loud before I even thought about my own glasses.

  “So, Huck, how long you wanted to be champ?” Buddha asked.

  “Probably always,” I answered. “But over the last year I’ve wanted it real bad.”

  “Yeah, takin’ that watch off Abbott’s wrist would be sweet. So would a free pass to that big Vegas tournament—a seat in that costs ten grand,” Buddha said, as we turned up the next flight. “But Huck, you gotta be twenty-one to play there. Is that you?”

  “Uhhhh, it will be, by the time it starts.” The words stumbled out of my mouth as I limped a little harder.

  I’d only wanted to beat Abbott. I never thought about going to Vegas, or representing Caldwell there. I couldn’t bluff my way through any of that. My thighs were starting to burn, and I took the last set of stairs extra slow. And suddenly, it was like Buddha had just stuck me with an extra weight to carry.

  “Good luck,” I told him, as he reached the third floor ahead of me.

  “Thanks, Huck,” he said, turning around. “I’d wish you luck too, but then you just might get some.”

  The meeting room was maybe a tenth of the gym’s size, and it was packed tight with six card tables, another for the tournament directors to sit at, and another with food. There were forty-eight players trying to stay alive and be part of the eight or fewer who’d make up a final table for Sunday.

  Jaws, Sammy, Snake Eyes, and Stani were still at my table, along with three other players I didn’t know. Then Rooster stopped by for a second, connecting his fist to Stani’s.

  “If it’s not me tonight, I want it to be you,” Rooster said, sincere.

  “Same here, buddy,” Stani said. “Same here.”

  “Yeah, right. I hope one of you busts the other before it’s over. Then we’ll see about that ‘buddy’ stuff,” jabbed Jaws.

  “Listen, big mouth!” screamed Stani, with Rooster holding him back. “You probably don’t have a real friend, ’cause you don’t know how to treat one. But before I left Caldwell, I lost my place and my job in that damn brushfire. Rooster let me stay with him then, too. When everybody else thought I was a crook. I’d give him the shirt off my back. So don’t tell me who’s a phony!”

  It wasn’t a regular blowup—the way people normally get pissed at a poker table. And I could see that Stani was close to the edge of something.

  “He’s sorry,” said Sammy, trying to calm things
down. “Hey, everybody. Look at fashion guru Huck with a baseball cap and a suit jacket.”

  “Did your mama dress ya like that, kid?” ripped Jaws, with one eye still glued to Stani.

  “Huck, forget poker,” Sammy piped in. “It’s Saturday night, no? You’re young. Find a girl.”

  Abbott was sitting at the next table, facing me. He looked completely zoned in on poker, and nothing or nobody else. My mind was racing everywhere—Abbott, Audra, the dance, Mom, Vegas. And until I settled down, I didn’t want to be pushing too many chips around, not unless I was riding aces or some other bolt of lightning.

  Sammy from Miami and one of the strangers at the table took the hardest hits in the early going. The stranger was taking notes on every hand. But he didn’t have a little book, like some players. He was writing on loose scraps of paper and napkins.

  “I already know the ending for that story you’re scribbling, and it’s not good for you,” Snake Eyes told him.

  Over the next hour, Stani busted Sammy, and Jaws cracked two of the strangers in one swipe, leaving us with a table of five players. Before he left, Sammy even snapped a picture of himself with his cell phone camera.

  “Now I join the rest of them, only better-looking,” he said with a half smile.

  Between them, the strangers counted out nearly four hundred dollars, putting it into Jaws’s open hand to cover their losing side bets.

  And deep down, my palms were still itching to get scratched like that.

  Later I got into a small showdown with Snake Eyes. After the river got dealt, and all the cards were on the table, he put down four even stacks of red and white chips.

  “So maybe I want to wear that watch too. You in?” he asked.

  “I’m holdin’ jacks,” I said, turning over my cards. “You tell me. Should I go in or fold?”

  I stared straight into his snake-eyed glasses. Then I studied his face, how he was holding his hands and breathing. Everything about him was rock steady, so I threw away my cards.

  “Bad move, Huck. You had me beat,” said Snake Eyes, never showing me his hand.

  “What a concept, truth-telling at a poker table!” howled Jaws.

  But in my bones I knew Snake Eyes was lying and would have crushed me.

  At the next table, Abbott was head-to-head against the last woman in the tournament. Her hands were shaking holding the cards, and everybody could see it.

  “Stop that. Is that for real? ‘Cause if that’s an act, it’s a bad one,” Abbott told her.

  She pushed the last of her small stack of chips in. Then Abbott called her bet right away and busted her.

  I could see how shook she was, with tears welling up in her eyes as she left.

  “Give her credit,” boasted Abbott. “She held it in. Some of you are gonna cry like babies right in front of me when I bust you.”

  “Yeah, right!” hollered Jaws. “Besides, that’s a man’s watch! It won’t fit a woman, or a kid!”

  I stared right at Jaws and tossed my ante onto the table.

  A couple of hands later, I was in a huge pot against Snake Eyes and the last stranger at the table—the one taking notes. The stranger went all in with his tournament stack and bet the last of his black chips, too. Snake Eyes reached for his own chips to call, but counted them out wrong.

  “Count ’em again,” the dealer told him.

  That’s when he took his glasses off to wipe them clean, and put out the right number of chips.

  That was the first time I’d seen him blink, and I pounced on it.

  I risked almost three-quarters of what I had.

  And losing that hand probably would have sunk me.

  But when I beat them both, I’d more than doubled my stack and broke the stranger, who had the second-best hand and went home with plenty of Snake Eyes’s real money from their side bet.

  It was twenty minutes to eight, and I had almost as many chips as Abbott.

  I was about to leave to get Audra and let the dealer deduct a chip from my stack for every hand I’d miss. But a tournament director told the four players at Abbott’s table to move over to ours.

  “That’s bullshit!” Abbott exploded. “I’m champ. They have to come here. I’m not gonna fill some loser’s empty seat.”

  Jaws complained that Abbott should get a ten-minute penalty for cursing. But he didn’t. And Abbott’s rant must have intimidated that director, because in the end, he stayed put and the four of us moved over there.

  I took the chair next to Abbott, shaking inside at the chance to finally go up against him. Then I pulled my cap down lower, till I didn’t have a forehead that he might recognize.

  “That’s a lot of chips to carry, kid,” said Abbott. “Heavy, huh? Don’t worry. I’ll take ’em all off your hands.”

  I couldn’t leave now, or it would have looked like I was scared shit of Abbott.

  After a few hands, I got dealt a pair of queens in the hole. So I pushed extra hard on purpose, advertising what I had. And when everybody else folded, I showed my cards, and pushing the bass in my voice deeper, I said, “That’s right. Bail out now before Huck gets to the river and sinks every last one of you jokers.”

  Then I looked over at Dad’s watch, and it was already ten minutes after eight.

  So I pushed a stack of chips toward the dealer and went for the door, dragging my left leg for Abbott to see.

  chapter nine

  AUDRA WAS SITTING ON her front porch as I pulled up. She didn’t move when she saw me, and I had to park the car and get out. I was twenty-five minutes late, and the sweat was rolling down my face.

  “I couldn’t wait for tonight, but I guess I had to anyway,” she steamed, as I walked up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, raising the shades up to rest on my head. “I had a family thing—doing something in my dad’s memory. I just got caught up. I’m really sorry.”

  That melted her down, and she hugged me like I needed one bad. But I didn’t deserve it and hated bending the truth on her that way.

  “It’s just a couple of minutes. I guess I got carried away,” she said, apologizing. “So what ever happened with Abbott? Did you poison his sandwich, or slip Ex-Lax into his soda? What?”

  “A work in progress,” I told her. “But it’s gettin’ there.”

  Then Audra’s mother came out and took a picture of us together next to the Mercedes.

  I tried to stand up as straight as I could. But I still felt like I was slumping.

  We got to the rec center, and just before we walked into the gym, Cassidy and his girl came over to us.

  “Hey, I saw you streaking outta here ten minutes ago,” Cassidy said. “I was callin’ after you, but you didn’t hear. What’s with that getup you were wearin’—the baseball cap and the headphones? You hidin’ out from somebody?”

  But I never answered.

  Instead, I shrugged him off and said, “I’ll catch up to you later.”

  Then I grabbed Audra by the hand and got hit with a wave of sound as I opened the door to the gym.

  Ms. Harnish was standing off to the side, kicking up her high heels to a song with a fast beat. Then her eyes met mine, and she took a long sideways glance at me. But Audra was looking at me ten times harder, like I’d played her dirty. And halfway through our first dance together, she stopped cold.

  “Were you here with another girl tonight?” she said over the music. “One before you picked me up late? Were you?”

  I had a line on my tongue, but it just lay there flat and wouldn’t roll off.

  “No,” I answered. “I was upstairs playing poker in the tournament.”

  That’s when I took Audra off to the side.

  “Abbott disrespected my dad in the worst way. How does anybody know what takin’ that watch off him did? The pope blessed it. Every day that bastard parades around with it. It’s like he’s spittin’ in my face—my Mom’s, too. And I’m the only one that can do somethin’ about it,” I said fast, nearly running out of breath.

>   “So what are you doing here with me?” she asked, stunned. “We can go out anytime. You should be upstairs kickin’ that loser’s ass.”

  That sent a rush through me to hear. But I wasn’t going anywhere till Audra and me got one real dance together.

  The music slowed down, and I held Audra tight in my arms. We swayed to the rhythm, and for those few minutes it didn’t matter who I was or what Abbott had dumped on me. For the first time since Dad died, I was just happy to be inside my own skin.

  Then we walked out of the gym, and Cassidy caught us in the hall.

  “So can we all make it up to the Point together?” he asked, sure of himself.

  I was so revved up, the truth just popped out of my mouth.

  “I can’t,” I told him. “I’m about to smack Abbott silly at cards and get my dad’s watch back.”

  “You’re in the tournament?” said Cassidy. “How’d that happen?”

  But I just shook my head at him, and said, “Maybe another time.”

  I was scared to death, and Cassidy was the last person I wanted to talk to. I didn’t know what I was going to do if Abbott beat me. But I walked Audra outside to the car without showing a crack in my confidence.

  “Monday morning at school’s gonna be a treat,” I told her. “You’ll see a different Abbott—a humble one. I guarantee it.”

  “I hope you win. I really do,” she said. “But you’ve already proved something to me.”

  Audra wouldn’t let me miss any more time by taking her home. So I grabbed the hat and headphones from under the driver’s seat. Then she kissed me quick and pulled the shades down over my eyes.

  “Go!” she yelled, shoving me back toward the rec center. “Go get him!”

  Father Dineros had been doing double duty, keeping an eye on the tournament and the dance. Cassidy was talking to him, looking over at me, with some other kids listening in. Now nearly everybody but Mom would know I was playing in the tournament, and I could feel Father Dineros’s eyes following me. So I sprinted upstairs to the meeting hall, jumping headfirst back into the game.

  “That had to be some shit you took, Huck,” cracked Jaws. “Maybe they should put a warning sign up on the bathroom door that says, ‘Chocolate Thunder Was Here!’”