Love’s Gamble

She got to Gino’s and basked for a moment in the restaurant’s warm atmosphere. She loved it here. It was the only place apart from the basement where she and her poker buddies gambled where she felt at home. It was the only place where people actually knew who she was, and welcomed her into the fold readily as if her place had always been booked for her.

She saw that Hwan was already there waiting for her. She smiled. It made her rather happy that she was not the first one to come here. It made her feel a little better about the fact that she had nothing else to do while waiting for her poker game than waiting with somebody that she was going to play poker with.

“Hey, you little piece of sh*t,” said Freema, ruffling Hwan’s hair before sitting down. She settled onto the barstool and ordered herself a whiskey on ice.

“How’s it hanging Freema?” said Hwan. “I’m asking you this as if I do not see you ever fu*king day anyway.”

“Not all that great,” said Freema.

Hwan grinned and said, “That license you lost coming back to bite you in the ass?”

Freema laughed and said, “Yeah you could say that.”

“You’re good Freema,” said Hwan. “You’re really good. The best I’ve ever seen in fact, and me saying that means a great deal coming from me you know that. But you get too arrogant sometimes, you think that you can beat anyone in your way simply because of the fact that you are good. You do not take into account things like luck, things that lay waste to even the best laid plans. I really think you should start being just a bit more careful.”

“Alright gramps,” said Freema, rolling her eyes but inwardly realizing that if Hwan, who was one of the most reckless poker players she had ever met, was saying this to her it meant that she might actually end up in some serious trouble if she was not careful.

“The other guys are coming here too,” said Hwan. “We haven’t done this in a while, met up at Gino’s I mean. I think we should start doing it more often.”

“You know that’s dangerous,” said Freema. “If the cops see too many of us in the same place they could end up following us to our new den.”

Hwan waved his hand nonchalantly and said, “That happened months ago, the cops are over it. We’re small fry for them, you know that. If only they knew just how much money was being bet at these games! I think they would have been a lot more interested in finding out where our new gambling den is if Fripp hadn’t taken the money bags out when he had gotten a tip that the cops were on their way.”

“We didn’t see those money bags again,” said Freema. “Fripp wasn’t saving our ass, he was filling his own pockets. He ran off after that game with over a hundred grand and no one’s ever seen him since. The biggest pot we have ever been able to accumulate and that asshole runs off with it.”

Hwan waved his hand again with the nonchalance that only a supreme sense of overconfidence would be able to muster. “Who cares why he did it? All that matters is that he did it and the cops will never find out that we are gambling so much money.”

“Fair enough,” said Freema. “It would be nice to start hanging out at Gino’s a little more. I guess it could help us to get into the feel of it again. Things haven’t really been the same since the bust, you know? We haven’t been betting as much money. I do not blame anyone for it, I’ve been betting less too. But where we used to bet tens of thousands of dollars we are only betting thousands now. I won seven hundred dollars last Saturday, and that wasn’t all that much less than the guy that won big that night.”

“Fu*king newbie,” said Hwan, his voice cracking with anger. “He got lucky that was it.”

“Aww, Hwan,” said Freema in a mocking tone, rubbing Hwan’s back. “Do not feel bad just cos you lost everything you had won that day to a fu*king newbie that got lucky.”

“Fu*k you,” said Hwan and they both laughed. They drank for a time and then were joined by everyone else that regularly attended the games. Peter, Leo, Lamar, Bert, Gil and Roseanne, the only female apart from her that regularly played poker at these games.

For a time it was good. For a time it was everything that Freema had always wanted, a family of sorts, albeit filled with people that she did not trust at all. But slowly and surely she was starting to realize that it was not enough, and that she was going to have to make her great escape very soon indeed.