Poor Places, Part II

Poor Places continues. (Part one is here)

Angela was twenty-two, with red hair, glacier-blue eyes, and skin so pale it practically glowed. She'd been coming to Don's for a year, on the arm of a hipster boyfriend whose interest in carefully-crafted irony began and ended with trucker caps and Stella. When Don's became Vanity, he declared the bar "over," and left them both for a Suicide Girl in Silverlake. Angela stayed, and Don hired her to be the hostess for his poker room. The money wasn't great, but it was better than waiting tables or working retail. When she ultimately found her way into adult modeling and then films a year later, Eddie – like every other man who passed through the door she now held open – finally got to find out what she looked like naked. None of them were disappointed.

"Hi Angela," Eddie said.

"Hi yourself," she said coyly. Man, that girl could work it.

"Good luck, buddy," Don said, hoping against hope that the Dodgers would pull off a ninth inning miracle. "Play smarter than these fucking guys!"

Don's poker club was as classy as a converted 40 by 40 storage room could be: the carpet was newer and cleaner that in the bar, the walls a light shade of grey, a ficus tree in one corner, floor lamps in the others. Players talked in a quiet murmur, barely louder than the shuffling of their chips. Three tables were laid out in a "U" shape, leaving just enough room to walk around them. It wasn't luxurious, but it was clean, safe, and closer than any of the legal card rooms in Los Angeles . . . and there was Angela, which was more of an overlay than any of the regulars were willing to admit.

She pointed to the only empty seat in the room. "Table two, seat nine," she said. Eddie pulled two bills from his pocket and gave them to her. "Checks?"

"Two hundred behind," she said to the dealer as Eddie sat down . She walked to the back of the room, where Armin – a large man with a large gun – sat between the only other door,and an Ikea credenza, pulling double duty as cashier and security. He put Eddie's money into a cash box, and pulled out two racks of chips.

Eddie surveyed the table as he waited for his blind: Seats one and two were a couple of Asian guys he'd seen before, but hadn't played with. Tourists filled the rest of the table, except for seat six, which was occupied by a television writer named Joel who lived up in Beachwood. Joel was a regular, and he and Eddie had gotten to know each other over drinks while waiting for seats. They weren't exactly friends, but they got along well enough. Joel had even taken Eddie to Odessa – Hollywood's crown jewel of underground poker clubs – before it was raided and closed the previous October, elevating Don's poker club to the only non-homegame in town.

They nodded to each other as the cards flew around the table, Joel in early position. Angela dropped off Eddie's chips, and he gave her two reds. She leaned in close, and gave him a smile that was well worth the ten bucks.

The tourist to Joel's right had over six hundred in front of him; Eddie could see Chris' fingerprints on most of them. The players in the three seats to Eddie's right quickly revealed themselves to be his favorite type of opponent: college kids who watched lots of poker on television, and decided that they could substitute aggression for skill. In a deep stack game, that could work in their favor, but Don's game was shorter: two and five dollar blinds with a two hundred dollar maximum buy-in. These kids needed to get very lucky to build up a stack that was big enough to intimidate players like Eddie and Joel, and even when they did, they rarely kept it long enough to be any lasting threat. By the time Eddie's big blind came around, seat eight had rebought for a total of three hundred dollars, both times going broke pushing an unimproved weak ace with no draw. Eddie got ready for a long and profitable night.

He sat back, slowly sipped his drink, and played patiently. He folded, called for cheap in position, and stayed out of trouble until he picked up a pair of jacks in the cutoff. Joel open-raised to fifteen, and was called by two of the tourists between them.

"I need to get rid of Joel," he thought, "and get heads up with one of these idiots."

"All in," Eddie said. He paused for a moment, and slowly, carefully, pushed his chips in front of him.

"All in for . . . 180," the dealer said.

Everyone folded back to Joel, who looked at Eddie. In a game like this, the regulars typically avoided each other and focused on tearing the throats out of the dead money at the table. Eddie was practically showing Joel his cards: he had to put him on tens or jacks, or maybe ace king. Joel would probably fold everything that wasn't aces through queens.

Joel pushed his glasses up on his nose and pursed his lips.

"All in." He said. Eddie's heart stopped.

The first tourist thought for a long time, drumming his fingers and talking himself into and out of calling, before he finally mucked. The second tourist, who was now stuck at least five hundred, instacalled for all his chips.

"Uh-oh," Eddie said, and showed his jacks. Joel turned up ace king, and the tourist, a college kid who was sweating profusely beneath his black cotton beanie cap, showed ace ten.

The Asian in seat two said, "You call with ace ten there? You crazy, man! No wonder you keep rebuy!"

The kid looked at the dealer and cheerfully said, "Ten ten! One time, dealer! Ten ten!" He thumped the table with a closed fist on each "ten."

Eddie had to admire his optimism, but he held his breath as the dealer pulled all the chips into the middle and made a main and side pot, totaling nearly five hundred dollars. She dealt out the flop: 8 5 T, all red. Eddie looked up and saw that everyone had black cards. He exhaled a little bit.

"Yes!" The kid said, "one more! Come on!"

Eddie laughed. This kid was drawing to two outs, and was acting like he'd already won.

The laughter died when a ten fell on the turn.

"YES!" The kid smacked the table and leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head.

"Aw, fuck." Eddie said to himself. "Nice hand, kid."

He looked over his shoulder and called out, "Checks on two, Angela!"

A gasp at the table, and a now familiar thump turned him around to see the river jack.

The kid had dropped his head onto the rail. He looked up, stricken. "Dude . . ." he said.

"Nice catch," Joel said, as the dealer pushed the pot Eddie's way.

Eddie shrugged. "I'd rather be lucky than good, man."

"I'll take both," Joel said.

Angela stood next to Eddie. "Who needs chips?"

Everyone avoided eye contact with the tourist, who reached into his pocket and pulled out a gangster roll of bills. "I do," he said, "two hundred this time."

Angela made eyes at him. "Sorry, sweetie." She leaned down, and kissed his sweaty and acne-scarred cheek "I think your luck's going to change."

It didn't, and between them, Eddie and Joel took over a thousand dollars each off the table before calling it a night around 6am. After cashing out, Eddie cleared a month's worth of bar tab, and pocketed what was left.

"Hey," Joel said to him as they stood on the sidewalk in front of the bar in the grey pre-dawn light, "can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Eddie said.

"How come you never talk about Space Phantoms?"

"Oh. That." He said. "It was . . . . uh, it was a long time ago."

"I loved that show," Joel said. "I think we're the same age, and I wanted to be your character so much when I was kid."

Eddie wished he could get another drink, and then another, and then another.

"Yeah." He said, and looked away. The eastern edges of the buildings around them caught the first fiery orange rays of the rising sun.

"So what are you doing now, anyway?" Joel said, "You acting in indies or –"

Eddie held his hands out and looked Joel in the eye. "This. This is what I do."

Joel recoiled. "Oh. Well. Okay."

Eddie put his hands in his pockets and looked at his feet.

"Uh, I just thought it was weird that we'd played together so long, and you never talked about it. I didn't realize it was a sore subject."

Eddie looked up and forced a smile. "It's cool, man. I'm glad you liked it. It was just a long time ago, you know?"

The door behind them opened and closed. Armin locked it and walked Angela to her car.

"You had a good night, boys," she said, as she passed. Did her eyes linger on Eddie a little too long?

"God bless those fucking tourists," Joel said.

"Fucking tourists!" Angela shouted. It echoed behind her as she disappeared, laughing,  around the corner.

"You need a ride home?" Joel said.

"Nah, I'll walk. It's . . . pretty close." Eddie said.

"Okay. See you soon." Joel said. "And I'm sorry, man. Seriously."

"Don't be." Eddie said.

They walked in opposite directions: Joel to his Prius, and Eddie to his one bedroom apartment above the laundromat. Eddie had five hundred dollars of someone else's money in his pocket, an empty bar tab, and a look from Angela that most guys would kill for. He still felt like a loser.

To be continued . . .