Love’s Gamble

To put it simply, she was going to bluff that she was bluffing badly, and this was hopefully going to draw the person with the queen in hand and the bad poker face in. She would be able to start raising after the next round and he was going to have to match her because he would have to prove his bravado. Everyone else would fold before too long but she knew that if she played this well she would be able to clean her opponent out, or at least deplete his finances to the point where he would not be willing to play her anymore. That would mean that there would be one less person to worry about.

The strategy worked perfectly well. She was able to get everybody else to match a few raises and when the last two cards were overturned she was sure that she was going to end up the victor. She timidly matched her opponents raises and then started to raise more aggressively. Her opponent was surprised but he had to keep matching her otherwise he would end up getting quite embarrassed in front of his poker buddies, and that was something that nobody would have wanted.

He kept matching her and eventually the pot amounted to seven thousand dollars. A pretty large amount, and Freema was sure that she was going to win it.

“Call,” said Freema. Her opponent said the same. There was a show of cards and for a moment there was silence at the table.

Freema had won, of course, but nobody else had seen it coming. She took in her chips with satisfaction. She had just increased her little nest egg by seven thousand dollars. This was a good amount but she wanted to bring it up to twenty so that she would have something good to take home tonight. She would take three thousand out of the money won today and use it to finance herself for the rest of the month.

Just as she had predicted, the fellow that she had just trounced angrily picked up his chips and stormed out. He had barely any money left on him. Freema had read him perfectly well, she had known exactly what kind of a person he was.

She looked around at the table. Seven pairs of eyes were looking back at her, and she had only just begun.

*****

Ken waited in the basement for the gamblers to come in. One by one, they did come in and were surprised to see him sitting there and waiting for them. Each time they asked him what he was doing there, whether everything was okay, he told them that he had to talk to them all together and he was waiting for everyone to arrive.

Once everyone was there, he stood up and addressed the group. “When was the last time any of you saw Freema?” said Ken.

They all looked at each other. Ken saw looks of guilt in their eyes. He was sure that they knew something, sure that there was some information here that he could gain about what was going on with her.

“It’s been a few days,” said Hwan. “The last time she was here was… tense.”

“Why?” asked Ken. “What happened? What made things tense?”

They all looked at each other again. Ken had had just about enough. His girlfriend was missing, their last interaction had been horrible, and he was starting to feel like everybody was keeping secrets from him. He banged his palm against the table and said, “If you guys want your fu*king poker den after today you are going to start talking. If I don’t start getting answers in the next ten seconds I am calling the fu*king police and getting you assholes out of here as soon as I can.”

The gamblers looked at each other in alarm and then Roseanne said, “We fu*ked up. We… we placed a bet on your relationship with her. You see, Freema is the kind of girl that runs from commitment. She never actually takes any of her relationships seriously. Until you that is. With you she seemed so… grounded. She seemed like she was actually considering being with you… you know, for the long haul. And we just made fun of her for that because she had always said that she would never want to be in a long term relationship with anyone, and yet here she is with you, looking like someone that can’t wait to get married.”

“So let me get this straight,” said Ken. “To make fun of her, you place an actual bet on her relationship? What the fu*k did you bet on, whether we were going to last or not?”

The gamblers looked at each other furtively. “Jesus!” said Ken. “This is fu*king incredible! Now, she has been missing since the day before yesterday. You guys are going to help me find her. Now tell me, where do you think she would have gone? She has been fired from her job so there is nothing we can do there.”

“If she’s been fired from her job she is going to need another source of income,” said Peter.

“Yeah,” said Bert. “And the fact that she is so emotionally unstable right now is going to contribute a lot to her doing something destructive and dangerous.”

“So she needs to earn money and she’s probably going to do something destructive and dangerous,” said Ken. “Are there any other gambling places in the city?”

“Yeah,” said Hwan, “but all of them are too dangerous.”

“Well she is definitely not coming back here,” said Ken, “I think she’d prefer dealing with the gangsters rather than you fu*kers. Tell me, how many places are there?”

“About six,” said Roseanne. “Each more dangerous than the last.”

“These places are serious business, man,” said Hwan. “The people that gamble at these places, they are going to have guns on them. They are going to have armed guards too. Let me tell you, we are really going to be entering the criminal underworld if we try to stake out those places.”

“Well then that’s exactly what we are going to have to do,” said Ken, “because if these places are dangerous, it means that Freema is in danger. She is going to use these places to earn money, I just know it. She is not thinking straight right now, she is going to end up getting herself into some serious trouble.”

“She’s a great gambler, man,” said Peter. “She’s probably going to wipe the floor with their asses.”

“Right,” said Ken, looking at Peter the way someone would look at a particularly disgusting piece of food that is left on a plate that they have to wash. “And what do you think these men with guns, these men whose pride is everything to them, are going to do when they get their asses handed to them by a newbie?”

Everyone looked at each other, their expressions quickly turning to fear, and they rushed out of the basement of the Totoya hoping that they weren’t too late.