Card Sharks

by Liz Maverick

  “Sounds like the same damn thing. I’ve committed my time and I don’t know what I’m getting . . . except a thong wedgie.”

  Rolling her eyes, Bijoux said imperiously, “A thong is essentially a wedgie.” She stepped forward, pressing her ear against the door this time. “It’s not very loud in there. It doesn’t sound very festive.”

  Marianne made a fist and pounded as hard as she could against the door.

  The door suddenly opened and Marianne stumbled forward into the arms of a pimply teenager. “Oh, my God,” Marianne said.

  “Oh, my God,” Bijoux blurted out.

  “Oh, my God,” the kid said.

  Marianne recovered her footing and took a step back, effectively removing her cleavage from the kid’s face. “This isn’t the poker game, is it?”

  “Yeah. It’s the poker game.” He moved the door open, his eyes still fixated. “Letting girls come was a good idea.”

  Marianne looked past him into the living room which was filled with seven other youngish looking boys sitting quietly around a coffee table containing a pile of plastic chips and some playing cards. As they robotically stepped over the threshold and entered the house, the boys froze, gaping at the girls in complete and utter shock. And possibly terror. “I don’t think these guys are even legal,” she hissed. “This is beyond desperation.”

  “Looking for someone to date is not inherently a desperate act.”

  “No, I’m saying, it’s not even in the realm of discussion. It’s, like, not even . . .” Marianne took a deep breath, exhaled, and then smiled at the small host. “Could we just have a . . . moment . . . maybe we could use the restroom or something?”

  The kid lifted his hand and managed to point to the hall bathroom with his index finger.

  “Great. Just a moment. Excuse us.” She grabbed Bijoux by the arm and dragged her into the bathroom, “They’re in high school. They’re probably freshmen!”

  “Well, obviously, I didn’t know that,” Bijoux said, taking another look at the piece of paper with the address on it. “I was expecting older guys. Maybe . . . maybe he has a brother and we just picked the wrong week, that’s all. The normal game is obviously at somebody else’s house this week.”

  “Then maybe we should go to that house! I mean, before, we were just being pathetically cliché by taking this ‘meet men’ thing to such great lengths. Now, we’ve added mind-numbingly embarrassing!”

  “Stop yelling me! You wanted to meet someone too!”

  “You don’t tell someone to stop yelling by yelling!”

  The girls simultaneously took a big deep breath and let it out. “We are losing our shit, here,” Marianne said in a much calmer voice.

  “Yeah. I know. You okay?” Bijoux asked.

  “I’m okay. You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Okay. So. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, we could stay and learn and then we’d be more impressive for the second game. You know, we’d be more realistic poker players.”

  Marianne leaned against the sink. “You know, when I was about that age, I remember the boys in my peer group making fun of my lack of breasts. I was a slow developer. And I remember crying, and my mother said, ‘One day, they’ll grow up, and you’ll be even more beautiful than you are now, and you won’t want to give them the time of day.’ As usual, my mother was right.”

  “So, you’re saying you want to go.”

  Cocking her head to one side, Marianne thought about it. “No, no actually I’m saying that karma is a bitch and since we’re here, let’s have them teach us how to play . . . and then we can rob the horny little suckers blind.”

  Bijoux’s mouth dropped open. “Mare, that’s evil.”

  But Marianne’s mind was made up. She flung open the bathroom door, accidentally slamming the knob into the nuts of an overeager eavesdropper. He fell backward to the floor, his mouth open wide in a silent scream as he cupped his groin with both hands.

  Marianne and Bijoux looked at each other in horror. “Maybe we should go,” Marianne whispered. “I don’t remember them being so delicate.”

  She felt a tap on her shoulder, and a small, earnest boy with Coke-bottle glasses asked, “Would you like something to drink?”

  This was not the kind of small boy she wanted to rob. The poor thing probably wasn’t in the position to make fun of anybody’s anything at school, much less some girl’s breast size. This didn’t look like the sort of kid who’d even ever seen a breast. In fact, he didn’t look like the sort of kid who’d ever see an actual breast before the age of seventeen. But if there was such a thing as karma, he’d be the next Bill Gates. A few decades too late for Bijoux to consider as a marriage prospect, though.

  The lad looked so nervous. So unstable. Marianne didn’t have the heart to bail out this soon. “A drink would be nice. Do you have the stuff for a mai tai?” Marianne asked.

  “Marianne!” Bijoux yelped.

  The kid blinked uncertainly.

  “Oh. Okay, just a screwdriver. That’s fine.”

  “Um, what’s in a screwdriver?” he asked.

  Bijoux dropped her head in her hand. “I don’t know if this is even legal.”

  “Orange juice and vodka,” Marianne explained, patting him on the head.

  After more nervous blinking and some pretty florid blushing, he found his voice (just barely) and said, “Um, there’s some orange juice and some water. And some, um, berry juice boxes.”

  “Just the orange juice, then.”

  The host kid disappeared into the kitchen and Marianne and Bijoux faced the living room. The injured eavesdropper huddled against the armrest of the couch moaning, but the rest of the boys were setting up the game.

  “Here, close that top up a bit more,” Bijoux said, rearranging her own breasts to show off less cleavage. “Let’s cover things up.”

  “If we sold skin-care products or Tupperware lunch boxes, we’d be in great shape,” Marianne muttered.

  The host kid came back and handed both Marianne and Bijoux gigantic glasses of orange juice, which they awkwardly held as they stood in the middle of the living room.

  “So, uh . . . do you want to play?”

  “You know, maybe we should get go—” Bijoux started to say.

  “Will you teach us how?” Marianne interrupted. “We don’t really know how to play.”

  The boys actually looked pleased. And a little relieved to have a purpose. The host kid cleared his throat. “Well, no-limit Texas Hold ’Em is the best poker game, I guess. You want us to teach you that?”

  “Yes,” Marianne said. “Please do.”

  “Okay, hold on a sec.” The boys huddled. Then in a flurry of hand gestures they roh-sham-bo’d amongst themselves and the winner of the winnowing process stepped forward. “I guess I’m gonna teach you,” he said shyly.

  The boys assembled around the table, taking extra care to make sure that Marianne and Bijoux were properly settled in their seats. The roh-sham-boh winner sat at the head of the table between the two girls, and in his best teacher’s voice began to explain the game. “The basic rules for no-limit Texas Hold ’Em are as follows. The first thing to know is that there is an automatic ante system called ‘the blinds.’ This system keeps the action in the game up by forcing two people from the group to ante up even before the cards are dealt. Everyone gets two cards. You evaluate your cards and decide if you want to keep playing. Whoever doesn’t fold right away plays in the first betting round . . . any questions so far?”

  Bijoux’s hand whipped up in the air. “Do you have big brothers who play poker?”

  “Yeah,” said the host kid. “That’s my brother.” He pointed to a photo sitting on the living room mantel. His brother was quite the looker.

  Bijoux and Marianne looked at each other. “Do you think they would play with us next time they have a game?” Bijoux asked.

  The kid looked at his pals, then looked at Bijoux’s cleavage. “Yeah,
I think they would play with you.” He gazed up at her. “But you should really learn how to play first.”

  Bijoux glanced at the big-brother picture, one more time. “I absolutely agree. Let’s continue.”

  “Okay, well, the dealer deals three community cards faceup in the middle of the table. These are known as ‘the flop.’ ” He dealt out some sample cards. “If you haven’t folded before, you look at your two cards plus the three community cards and see if you think you can beat the best five cards everyone else could be holding. But you gotta remember that there are going to be two more community cards coming.”

  Marianne stared at her two cards, looked at the flop, then reached over and looked at the cards Bijoux would have been holding if they’d actually been playing. “I’m with you. Go on.”

  “If you like your stuff, you stay in for the second betting round, and if you don’t like your stuff, you muck your cards.”

  “Muck your cards?” Bijoux asked.

  “Fold ’em,” Marianne said authoritatively.

  The kid nodded. “And so the best five out of seven total cards wins. And that’s it. It’s really simple.”

  Marianne stared at the youngster. It had to be if grade-schoolers or whatever were playing it.

  Bijoux scanned her cards and dropped them limply on the table. “Math. Marianne, you are going to be so good at this.”

  Marianne smiled back at her. “Keep going.”

  “Okay . . . so the dealer deals the fourth community card down on the table. It’s called ‘the turn,’ or ‘Fourth Street.’ You all look at your best cards, and then if you’re still in, you play in the third betting round. Then it’s the same thing with ‘the river,’ the fifth—and final—community card also known as ‘Fifth Street.’ You look at your combined stuff, your best five, and you bet or you muck.” He shrugged. “That’s really it. Do you wanna play some hands?”

  At the same time Marianne uttered, “Yes,” and Bijoux uttered, “No.” The girls looked at each other and Bijoux sighed and surrendered. “I’ll do it,” she whispered, “But only because it will give us added poker cred when we finally play with the big boys.”

  They played for a while, Marianne getting more and more into the game itself, Bijoux getting more and more restless beside her.

  Finally, they took a breather and things seemed to break up a bit. Marianne tossed her cards in the center of the table and let Bijoux pull her to the side. “Bijoux,” Marianne said in a voice full of wonder. “This is going to be the most fun I’ve ever had trying to get a date.”

  A worried expression came over Bijoux’s face. “Well, don’t forget to focus on the task at hand. I mean, if you take all the money, I don’t think the men will want to go out with us.”

  The smile on Marianne’s face widened.

  “Oh, no. Marianne, be good. Keep the focus where it needs to be.”

  “I thought the whole point was money. You only wanted to play to find a rich guy with money. If we can make the money ourselves, what do we need the guys for?”

  “Well, I can think of at least one other good reason to have a guy around.”

  Bijoux folded her arms over her chest and tapped her foot on the ground. “You’re forgetting something very important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re doing this to meet men, not to win money.”

  “I don’t want to lose my money.”

  “Well, you can hardly believe that I do. You need to think of it as an investment in the future.”

  “If you win money, you won’t have to marry rich.”

  “Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” Bijoux said, choking on laughter. “I don’t want to think about how much poker I’d have to play—and win—in order to bypass the whole multimillionaire-husband thing. It would not be a pretty sight. You’d probably find me in a polyester leisure suit with a walker in an Indian casino off a desolate highway in Arizona trying to persuade the floor guy to give me a coupon so I could eat lunch.”

  Marianne let herself fall back against the wall. “That is quite possibly the most depressing thing I’ve heard out of your mouth in a very long time. I see this is serious. I don’t want to be responsible for what you just described. Let’s go meet some men.” She turned to the gamer boys. “Gentlemen, it’s been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time to teach us.”

  The kids all looked a little crestfallen as the girls stood up and collected their things.

  “You’re not coming back, are you?” the host kid asked.

  Marianne looked at Bijoux, then back at the boys. “Um, no. But thank you so much for everything.”

  “Can we take your picture?” he asked. The others perked up immediately, hopeful expressions plastered across their faces. Bijoux winced. But fair was fair as far as Marianne was concerned. She still felt a little guilty about her initial impulse to make these guys pay for the sins of boys in her own junior high days. And the change she’d just won off them rattling in her pocket proved they had paid, somewhat. They handed Marianne and Bijoux each one end of their gaming club banner, and the guys all filled in between them.

  After the photo-op, the host kid pulled a small notepad from his pocket and wrote something down with a pencil. It looked sort of warm and moist from having been stuffed in the bottom of his pocket for so long. Marianne and Bijoux looked at the scrap, and Marianne gingerly took it between her fingers.

  “That’s my cell phone number. In case you change your mind.”

  Bijoux’s eyebrow arched. Marianne elbowed her to keep her quiet. “Thanks.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and meet my parents? They’ll be home soon.”

  “Oh, no thanks. But thanks.”

  There was an awkward pause as Marianne and Bijoux both started for the door.

  “Um, Marianne?”

  She looked over her shoulder, desperately trying to keep a straight face.

  “You guys are really hot.” The rest of the boys nodded solemnly.

  “Thanks.” She stuck her hand out, and he came over and shook it. Bijoux followed suit.

  And with that, the girls headed for the car.

  “It’s only nine,” Marianne said. “We should have known that a six o’clock poker game was suspicious.”

  Bijoux giggled. “They probably have to go to bed early so they’ll be rested for their soccer games.” She got in the car and buckled in. “Hey. You’re not mad at me, are you? If I’d known—”

  Marianne was just sitting in the driver’s seat with the keys in her hand.

  “No, it’s not that. I was just thinking about those guys. High school’s a horrible, horrible place for guys like that. This was probably the highlight of their year.”

  “Probably,” Bijoux said with a sigh.

  “It’s just that those boys . . . it’s before they really know how to be . . .”

  “Bastards.”

  “Yeah. It’s before all the baggage and the game playing and the commitment issues. They think we’re goddesses. And they seem so damn innocent.”

  Bijoux laughed. “They’ll get over it. The next thing we know they’ll be passing that picture around school and calling us hookers.”

  “Point,” Marianne said, wrinkling her nose. She held up the scrubby piece of paper, stuck it in her pocket with a shrug, and then keyed the ignition.

  “So what’s the take?” Bijoux asked.

  “Fourteen twenty-five. It’s not much, but I didn’t want to completely fleece the poor fellows.”

  Bijoux stared at her. “The total pot was twenty dollars. That is fleecing the poor fellows.”

  Marianne shrugged. “Is not. I can’t help it if I’m a natural. I could have easily won that five seventy-five. I exercised restraint. And anyway, here’s hoping the next one provides better spoils.”

  “When it comes to both men and money,” Bijoux said, leaning her seat back as Marianne hit the accelerator and peeled back down the canyon road.


  Bijoux breathed a sigh of relief the moment the door opened on the second party and the girls stepped inside the enormous home. It wasn’t necessarily more swanky than the last one, but it had a carefully cultivated sleekness emanating from the white and steel interior design. In short, it breathed money and there were actual full-grown men inside.

  There didn’t seem to be a designated host and nobody greeted them as they weaved through what was a fairly good sized crowd. It was a beautiful people party and Bijoux tensed a little at the knowledge that she would be judged as harshly—if not more harshly—by others as she would of them. “I need a drink.”

  Marianne nodded toward a staircase leading downstairs in the direction of blaring hip-hop music and the girls descended down white carpeted steps into a huge underground den.

  “Bingo,” Marianne muttered.

  “You want one?” Bijoux asked.

  Marianne was already busy doing the classic L.A. party neck craning thing which involved keeping a minimum of attention on the not famous person you were talking to while trying to spot a theoretically more interesting famous person to talk to instead.

  Bijoux just turned and headed for the martini bar. It was well done, set up with a full array of retro cocktail shakers, napkins, hors d’oeuvres plates, and carefully arranged bowls of cherries, olives, and lemon and lime slices.

  She ordered up and allowed herself to relax just a tiny bit, in spite of the anxiety she felt over not knowing a soul at the party save for Marianne. Martinis. Swanky digs. And gorgeous people. A bartender looking very Frank Sinatra in a white tuxedo jacket speared a pair of olives with a Las Vegas–logo cocktail stirrer, accessorized the martini he’d just made and pushed it gently toward her.

  Maybe this whole poker construct wasn’t such a stupid idea after all.

  Her phone rang. “Excuse me. Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  Bijoux swung around. Surrounded by men, Marianne stood at the other end of the room with the phone up to her ear, her hand strategically placed around the mouthpiece area to make it private.

  “There’s something strange about this party,” Marianne said.