“At this rate, that’ll take a while.”
“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?
With the river cards dealt, he bet and Taggert raised, which made him very happy, and he raised back and so did Taggert, and now he wasn’t all that happy. Taggert had four diamonds showing, and there was no way he could have a straight flush, not with the five and nine of diamonds in Krale’s hand, but neither was there any way Taggert could make that second raise with nothing better than a flush.
So Krale called, and Taggert turned over a pair of tens that matched one of his diamonds and an eight that matched another, giving him tens full, which, alas, beat Krale’s nines full.
He sat there, trying to catch his breath, watching Taggert pull in the pot, and that was when Tina came in with the coffee.
“And I made sandwiches,” she said. “I figured you boys must have worked up an appetite by now.”
Appetite? If there was one thing Krale didn’t have, besides the fourth nine, it was an appetite. He felt a hollowness in his middle, but had no urge whatsoever to try to fill it. He didn’t want the coffee, either, and as for the brandy, well, he’d already swallowed it, and all he could hope was that it would stay down.
He excused himself, and as he left the room he heard Tina asking Taggert if something was wrong. He didn’t catch Taggert’s reply.
Nines full, carefully nursed along, with every bet calculated to get the maximum amount of money in the pot. Everything was perfect about that hand except the outcome.
He tried to look at the bright side, but there didn’t seem to be one. At least he hadn’t raised one more time. He could have been stubborn enough to throw another twenty dollars in the pot, in which case Taggert would certainly have bumped him again. So, yes, he’d managed to save forty dollars, but was that a bright side? Glimpsing it, would one be well advised to pop on a pair of sunglasses?
Krale didn’t think so.
He went to the bathroom, the one in the back of the house off the master bedroom, so that they wouldn’t hear him gagging. He decided he might feel better if he threw up, but as it turned out he couldn’t throw up, nor did he feel better.
On the way back, he stopped in the den and opened the upper left hand drawer of his desk. It was the one with the lock, although the key had been misplaced years ago. So it was never locked, but still it was the natural place to keep a gun, and that’s where Krale kept his .38-calibre revolver. He took it out, held it in one hand and then the other, swung out the cylinder to make sure that all its chambers were loaded, closed the cylinder again, and held the gun to his temple, then put the barrel in his mouth.
And how would it play?
They’d hear the shot. They’d run in, see him. And then?
It’d almost be worth it if he could see the expressions on their faces. Tina, who typically looked as if she was trying not to look disappointed, would show some other, more forceful emotion on her beautiful face. And Taggert’s habitual poker face would almost certainly lose its composure, if only for a moment.
But he wouldn’t get to see it. He’d be dead, with his brains spattered on one wall or another, depending which way he faced when he pulled the trigger. And he wouldn’t know whether they laughed or cried.
So what was the point? Well, he’d be out of it. There was that. The pain, which might be quite bad for a moment there, would stop, once and for all. But was that reason enough to do it?
You can kill yourself, he thought. Or you can go back to the table and take that sonofabitch for everything he’s got.
He returned the gun to the drawer. On his way to the table, he found himself wondering if he’d made the right choice.
He began winning.
It wasn’t terribly dramatic. Most of the pots were small ones, and he couldn’t get any real momentum, but he was gaining ground, inching along, taking two steps forward and one back.
“Slow going,” he said, when Taggert folded after receiving his second up card. “Maybe we should raise the stakes.”
“Oh?”
“Make it twenty-five and fifty,” he suggested.
Taggert frowned. “Let me think about it,” he said, and reached for the cards. “I’m not sure how much longer I want to play.”
“Come on,” Krale said. “The night is young.”
“Well, I’m not, and it’s past my bedtime. And the trouble with a two-handed game is you’re always either dealing or shuffling. It’s a pain in the ass, passing the cards back and forth all night long.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but knew that Taggert was right. “What we need,” he said, “is a house dealer.”
“Yeah, right,” Taggert said. “Why not wish for a full range of casino perks while you’re at it?”
“I’m serious,” Krale said. He got to his feet, called out, “Tina!”
“We’ll stick to seven-card stud,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been playing anyway, nine hands out of ten. Tina, you know how to deal stud, don’t you? Two down cards, four up cards, one down card.”
“What about the ante? We’ve been playing dealer ante, and if we don’t take turns dealing—”