Love’s Gamble

“How do you know my name?” said Ken.

“Because we own this basement,” said Freema, her voice tough, her demeanor entirely unafraid. “We have been playing poker here for months, and before this place it was the bar called Gino’s up the road.”

“What?” said Ken. “The people that owned this place before me, the people I bought this place from, they told me nothing of this! Nothing at all!”

“Of course they didn’t you fu*king idiot,” said Freema. Ken flinched as she spoke to him and insulted him, Freema noted with no small amount of satisfaction. “They wanted you to buy this place. They knew you weren’t going to do that if you had an illegal poker ring running out of your basement.”

Ken took a deep breath and then looked at her with a determined expression on his face. It was rather cute, that expression. It was the expression a puppy would get before trying to pounce on its owner. It had no real ferocity in it, that expression. Rather, it was a little pathetic because of all that it was not.

“The Kim’s might have let you use their basement in this manner,” said Ken, “but I am most certainly not going to allow it. You are just going to have to pack up and move your operation somewhere else.”

Freema laughed, and it was not a pretty laugh. It was full of scorn and disdain, and she enjoyed watching Ken wilt as he listened to it. “We’re just gonna have to pack up and leave? Why?”

“Because I am telling you to,” said Ken, indignantly. “And because I am the owner of this restaurant. You can’t be here, it’s illegal!”

“Well what the fu*k are you gonna do about it?” asked Freema. “We’re not going to leave. We like it here. You go upstairs and make all of the people you are serving happy. Let us enjoy ourselves down here. Run along now.”

Ken looked indignant as he said, “I am going to call the police. What you are doing here is highly illegal and you are all going to pay for it!”

“Really?” said Freema. “You’re going to tell the police that we are here? Is that so?”

Ken looked at her, unsure of how to respond to her sarcasm.

“Do you think that an operation like this is conducted by just anybody?” said Freema. “Do you really think that we are just a bunch of schmucks that you can push around whenever you feel like it?”

“What do you mean?” asked Ken, suddenly anxious.

“We represent a very powerful and very wealthy part of the mafia,” said Freema. She had to struggle to keep her voice even and her expression blank as she spoke. She also was very careful to avoid the gaze of every other person in that room. She knew that if she looked at anyone else she would see them trying not to laugh and she would not be able to control herself anymore. She would end up bursting out in laughter as well, and that was going to ruin the whole thing.

She was bluffing, of course. This operation was illegal but it was highly benign. It did not represent any major criminal enterprise in any way, and they all knew it. That was why they tried so hard to keep things non violent. They had no muscle to back themselves up, and they had no influence with the police. They were just a bunch of gambling enthusiasts who wanted a place to play poker.

“W-what?” said Ken. “You guys are with the mob?”

“Of course we are you moron,” said Freema, laying it on thick with the insults because she knew that it was going to paint her as the dominant person in this conversation and that was exactly what she wanted to be right now. “You think we are just gambling here because we like it? This is dangerous money you see in front of you, dirty money. You can call the cops if you want, but just know that as soon as they come here and see our faces, they are just gonna shake our hands and apologize for any inconvenience they might have caused. And when they’re gone, each and every one of us is going to take a great deal of pleasure in kicking your ass turn by turn.”

Ken paled as she spoke. He was looking at her with a great deal of fear on his face. She knew that she had him.

“Head on up to your restaurant,” said Freema. “You do not mess with us, we do not mess with you. That’s the deal.”

Ken gulped, nodded and skulked back up, glancing behind him as he walked. He shut the door, everyone waited a minute and then burst out laughing.

“What the hell was that?” spluttered Hwan. “The mafia? Gil’s a fu*king accountant at Whole Foods!”

This sent everyone into even greater fits of laughter. Bert sobered up first and then said, “We’re gonna have to talk to him again, though. I mean, do not get me wrong, that was fun and all but this guy is going to realize eventually that we are not connected to any professional criminal organization, and when he finds out he is going to call the police. If he gets annoyed by how we are behaving, he could call the police anyway, thinking that even if he does get his ass kicked he could record it or something and show it to someone even higher up than our local police department.”

Freema scowled. It had been a lot of fun to take her anger and frustration out on the owner of the restaurant, and she did not want anyone to spoil her newly improved mood.

“We had a deal with the Kim’s for a reason,” said Bert. “We gave them a cut of whatever was won on a particular day, and they would keep their mouths shut. You need to give this guy a reason to have us on his property. If we offer him money, he is going to have a reason to tolerate us, otherwise he is going to cause problems sooner or later.”

“So what the fu*k should I do?” said Freema, her tone as hostile as her mind right now.

“After a little while,” said Bert, “after midnight let’s say, when the place closes down, go up and talk to him again. Tell him about our deal. You’re the one that interacted with him, you’re the one that’s gonna have to deal with this now.”

Freema was annoyed but she knew that she had no other option. Bert was right. She was going to have to do this for the good of the gambling den. She had to do it to keep this place safe, this place that had turned into such an important escape for her. She played a few games, and then headed up to the restaurant to talk to Ken.

Chapter 3

Freema reluctantly walked up the steps that led to the main restaurant. This was something that she had to do, but that did not make it any easier for her. Still, this was for the good of her gambling group, and the survival of this group was essential if Freema wanted to get out of this hell hole that she had called home all her life.

Freema spotted Ken slumped in front of the cash register. She had to admit that he was really cute. He was a wimp, there was no denying that one fact, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a fine looking man, and she was surprised to realize that she was more than a little attracted to him. In another life, under different circumstances, she might just have asked him out, but it was not meant to be or so Freema thought.

“Hey,” said Freema, walking up to Ken. He looked up and then tensed. He had a hard look on his face. It was a look that might just have been dangerous had it been on any other man’s face, but his was just too gentle a countenance to allow any severity to come across in any serious way. She kind of liked that about him. Her whole life she had been surrounded by tough guys, or at the very least men who hid a fair bit behind their expressions. She liked that Ken could not pretend to be someone that he wasn’t. She liked that he was the type of genuine person that would only be able to show his true emotions, the feelings that he tried and failed to hide so often.

After not receiving a response from Ken, Freema decided to push through with her offer. “Listen,” she said, struggling to keep the acidity out of her voice. “I think we came off on the wrong foot back there. How about we wipe the slate clean and start fresh?”

Ken snorted and said, “Wipe the slate clean? After you humiliated me in there like that? What are you even doing up here? You told me that you guys have muscle and that I’m going to have to deal with you gambling down there. I do not really have a choice, now do I? So what are you doing here? Are you here to gloat?”

“No, no, not at all,” said Freema, trying her best not to laugh. She was starting to realize just how integral sarcasm and hostility was to her manner of speech. She was almost unable to communicate at all when these aspects of her personality could not be shown. Acidity, hostility, all of these things were a natural part of who she was and she was starting to wonder why that was. Now was not the time to ponder such things, however, so she decided to focus on the matter at hand. She needed to offer Ken the deal that had been provided to the Kim’s before him, and she needed to make sure that he would accept the deal.

“Listen,” said Freema, deciding to be as meek as possible so as to make the likelihood of Ken accepting the deal as high as possible. “I think I started all of this off the wrong way yet again. Let me start over. I’d like to start by first apologizing to you for how I treated you in there.”

Ken stilled eyed her with suspicion. “Right,” he said. “Well, thank you. Will that be all?”

“No, actually,” Freema snapped, then she calmed herself down and smiled at him. “No, we have something more to discuss as well if you have the time. Trust me, it’s going to be worth your while.”

“I do not want anything you guys have to offer,” said Ken. “I just want you guys out of my restaurant. If you can’t give me that, if I am going to have to bear you guys doing something illegal in my basement every single day, well then there is nothing I can do. I am just going to have to accept it.”

“Just listen,” said Freema through gritted teeth. She was starting to get very impatient. She usually dealt with people that were not willing to listen to her with a lot of aggression, but she knew that she had to make sure that Ken did not get any ideas and call the police on them. “Just give me five minutes of your time.”

“I have to get home,” said Ken. Freema stepped in front of him and looked him right in the eye. It was the kind of look that would have made bigger and stronger men than Ken quail in fright, and he was no match for it. He immediately seemed to shrink before Freema’s very eyes and said, “Very well. What is it that you want to tell me?”

Freema smiled and said, “I want to start off by telling you that all of that in there about us being tied to organized crime was a joke.”

“It was a what?” said Ken, utterly nonplussed with shock. Freema didn’t blame him. She had scared the pants off of the poor guy, and now he was discovering that there had been no need to get frightened at all.

“It was a joke,” said Freema. “A joke. We were having a laugh. We were pulling your leg. You know, a joke.”

“I know what a joke is,” said Ken, his voice agitated and angry. Freema was surprised by this sudden display of aggressive aggravation. It seemed that now that violence was no longer threatened against him, Ken felt free to be more assertive. That meant that he had it in him to be more assertive in general, he just needed the confidence to do so. Freema made a mental note of this. If this guy was going to be the owner of the place she was going to be playing poker in, she was going to have to train him and help him to become a lot more assertive so that he could handle difficult situations when they arose, such as if the cops came calling.

“Good,” said Freema. “Then you probably understand that you have no real reason to fear us at all. We are just a bunch of guys that want to enjoy ourselves with a bit of harmless gambling now and then. We do not do any drugs down there, we just drink our own booze. We aren’t going to be taking any of your stuff, and we are not going to allow anyone to get violent down there. You can ask the Kim’s about us, in the three months that we were in this place while they were running it we didn’t have a single fight. That’s quite impressive you will have to admit, and I am proud to say that we manage to keep violence to an absolutely minimum in all situations. Now, all of this is to assure you that we are not going to give you any trouble while we are gambling in your basement. Now you might be wondering what’s in it for you. If not that, you might at least be wondering why you should tolerate us in your basement if you are not going to have any trouble calling the cops on us and getting us kicked out and having your whole restaurant to yourself. I will tell you why you are not going to be doing that. Now see, for a while the money that has been bet during this games has dwindled because a lot of us have gotten spooked by the fact that we were almost caught by the police at our last spot. However, on a good night, we manage to get a great deal of money down there. Upwards of ten thousand dollars at time. That’s nothing to sneeze at. And you will get five percent of that. That’s right, whatever the final amount is, you are going to get five percent of it. That means that whenever a man bets ten dollars, you just earned yourself fifty cents. Not bad right?”