The Old Girlfriend of Doom by Dean Wesley Smith
Sometimes even superheroes can’t save the day, or the girl, or the dog, and that fact is even sadder when the girl is one of the superhero’s old girlfriends.
Honest, Poker Boy, and just about every superhero, once had a childhood, a life as a young adult, without powers. I only discovered my Poker Boy super abilities later in life, after I had lived a fairly regular life until the age of twenty-nine. Little did I know that someday I would put on the black leather jacket and the fedora-like hat and become Poker Boy, savior of blind women, lost husbands, and dogs.
It was Christmas Eve, a holiday for me just about like every other one. I was home, alone, in my double-wide mobile home that I had bought twenty years ago with the money from my winnings in a poker tournament. The green couch and chairs had come with it, and so far I had seen no reason to replace the perfectly good, but dog-ugly furniture. As a national-level poker player, I had more than enough money in a dozen accounts to buy a nice home and nice furniture, but since I was in poker rooms and hotels more than I was here, what was the point?
I was watching some lame Christmas program on television and eating a television dinner with fried chicken and the really good cherry desert. I had about two hours to get to the casino to sign up for the poker tournament, and I was enjoying the quiet, to be honest.
Then there was knock on my door.
As Poker Boy, I very seldom have the people who need help come to me, but there have been exceptions. And since I wasn’t expecting any company, I figured right off this was one of those exceptions.
I opened the front door of my double-wide mobile home and saw my old girlfriend, Julie Down, standing there on the other side of the screen door. Of course, right at that moment I didn’t know it was Julie. All I could see was that it was some woman about my age with a nice smile and an overbuilt chest.
“Hi,” Julie said, smiling at me as I stood there, hand on the wooden door, staring at her though the screen.
Now I have a great memory for faces across poker tables. I can tell you the moment a person sits down if I have played with them before, the style of their play, and their poker tells. I won’t remember their names, but I know the important stuff and how to take their money.
With old girlfriends, from the life before I became the superhero Poker Boy, I am lucky even to remember going out with them, let alone things like their names or if we slept together. I assume that any old girlfriend coming to find me years later is someone I must have slept with.
On top of my bad memory, Julie didn’t look like the Julie of old. Granted, I’m forty-nine, and Julie and I were an item back twenty-five years before, when she was only twenty. But that said, she just didn’t look the same. Not even close.
Julie of old had long blonde hair that had touched the top of her butt. I remember I used to love lying in bed and watching that hair flow over her back as she walked naked around the bedroom. This Julie standing in front of me had tight, short graying hair, curled in a style that made her look older and very businesslike.
Julie of old was rail thin, with no real breasts to speak of, and no body fat at all.
This Julie had filled out, as all of us have. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t that light and rail thin either. And she had had a boob job at some point. Or one hell of a growth spurt focused only on her chest. The white blouse she now wore under her open suede jacket made sure that everyone could see the growth spurts and the lace bra trying to hold back the progress.
“Hi,” I said in return, at that point not yet knowing who the hell I was talking to. I wished at that moment that I had my black leather jacket and hat on and was closer to a casino. Then I could use my superpowers to help me figure out exactly what this woman wanted to sell me.
Or wanted me to do.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.
Okay, I have to admit that those words are the worst words any guy can ever hear from some strange woman standing at his door. I didn’t have a clue who she was, yet she remembered me well enough to track me down.
A guy is never allowed to forget a woman.
Ever.
I glanced at her boobs, and since they were new since the last time I saw this woman, they didn’t help. And her face rang a sort of bell when I looked right at her, and into her eyes, but not much of a bell. Actually, sort of a faint ding, like an oven timer going off in another room.
If I hadn’t been a superhero, who didn’t lie unless it was to save a life, or rescue a dog, I would have just laughed and said, “Sure I do, come on in.” And then tried to figure out who she was through the conversation.
But she had asked me a direct question, and being a superhero, I couldn’t lie. So instead I said, “I can’t really see you very well in this light. Come on in.”
I honestly couldn’t really see her that well in the porch light and through the screen door, so I didn’t lie. I just bought a little needed time.
As I swung open the screen door to let her come inside, she let me off the hook.
“It’s me, Julie.”
For a moment, as she stepped past me, leading into the room with those new growth spurts on her chest, I couldn’t remember any Julie’s in my life either. Especially Julie with a chest the size of the Rockies.
“Julie Down,” she said, ending all torture.
“Oh, my god, Julie,” I said, “what a great surprise.”
Actually I sounded happy mostly because she had let me out of the trap, and not because I was actually glad to see her. The last time we had spoken, she had called me a lazy bum, said I would amount to nothing, and that I should get a life. Or at least a reason for living and breathing.
Actually, at the point she left me, I was a lazy bum, and I really did need a life, but I wouldn’t find that life until a number of years later, when I became Poker Boy.
In all, I think we dated seven months, or, more accurately, had sex for seven months. I don’t remember much else in the relationship with her.
After I gave her the required hug, with her growth spurts holding us apart, she stepped back and studied me, then my abode, like a meat inspector looking over a side of beef.
“You look like you’re doing well for yourself,” she said.
Even without my superpowers I knew that was a lie. I was living in an old mobile home, with old, ugly furniture and a half-eaten t.v. dinner on the coffee table. I looked like, on the surface, the same guy she had gotten mad at twenty-five years before. If I had not had my Poker Boy identity, and a lot of money in different banks from all my poker winnings, I would have been ashamed that an old girlfriend saw me living like this. But superhero status and large bank accounts tend to make a guy not care, and I didn’t really care what she thought.
“Actually,” I said, “I’m doing very well. Can I get you something to drink? Diet Coke and water are the options.”
She laughed, a high, soft sound I remembered from our past. Her laugh had been one of the things that had attracted me to her back then. That and sex.
Now I just wanted to know what she wanted. And the only way I was going to be able to do that with my superpowers was get my coat and hat on and get back into a casino.
My superpowers don’t work a great distance from a casino. They are powered by the energy of a casino, as a flashlight is powered by a battery. My black leather coat and hat seemed to focus the energy from the casino and make me into Poker Boy.
“Wait,” I said, “I have another idea. Let me buy you dinner and a drink at the casino.” I pointed to my partially eaten t.v. dinner. “That just isn’t doing it for me.”
“That sounds great,” she said.
No doubt she was relieved to get out of the old mobile home.
Fifteen minutes of very, very small talk later, we were seated in the fine dining restaurant at the casino. I had my leather coat and hat on and was in full Poker Boy power mode.