Death On the Flop (2 page)

When I had a career, that is.

“Belinda Cooley, you don’t need me to tell you.” Ben pointed at me with his half of a carrot. “You know very well that having a fling with your boss was a mistake.”

“It was more than a fling; we were engaged.” I corrected.

“Worse mistake.” The carrot waggled. “Although the biggest one of all was quitting your job. Why the hell did you do that, Bee? You know that if you had kept your famous cool, the prick wouldn’t have been able to stomach seeing you day in day out. Guilt would’ve driven him to leave before you’d have to.”

“It wouldn’t have been guilt, the chipped nail polish would’ve done it,” I quipped.

“Huh?” Ben paused in midchew and cocked his head.

Sometimes guys just don’t get it, even twin brothers, so I didn’t try to explain. “Inside joke. Listen, Ben, I had to quit to maintain one iota of pride. You didn’t expect me to keep taking orders from Toby over the intercom while he was boinking his new twenty-two-year-old assistant in his office?”

“She’s just twenty-two?” Ben asked, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Ooolala.”

“Ben . . .” I warned.

Winking, he tapped the carrot to his temple thoughtfully. “You’re right, Bee. I guess you had to leave. Still, it’s all for the best. You’ll end up at another advertising firm where you can kick ass. Stick-up-his-butt Toby was always so worried you’d show him up he never gave you free rein anyway. Now, before you go pounding the pavement, you’re due a getaway. Also, I owe you a birthday present and I had a great idea . . .”

Uh-oh. The last time Ben had a great idea I was thirty, and we ended up in jail in Bermuda.

“Hey, Miz Cooley.” Ben deepened his voice to a fakey broadcaster level. “You’ve just
won
your life back. And,
where are you going
?” Ben swung the carrot around to hover in front of my mouth. I stared stonily at him. He shoved it closer. I didn’t move a muscle, just threw a little more acid in my stare, hoping it was approaching a glare. But as usual my brother was impervious. He wiggled his eyebrows once more in invitation, then slid his head next to mine and shouted into the carrot microphone with his voice now two octaves higher than usual, in a lame attempt to sound like my soprano. “I won, Mr. TV Announcer Man, and I’m going to Vegas!”

“Isn’t it supposed to be Disneyland?” I deadpanned.

“Disneyland?” Ben bit off the top of the carrot and chewed as he slid back onto his chair across from me. “Why would you want to waste that terrific poker face of yours on some kiddy park when you can use your rare talent to take suckers’ money left and right in the city that never sleeps?”

“Uh, maybe because I don’t know
how
to play poker?” I rolled my eyes and tried to resist the tears that suddenly threatened again.

“That, my dear sister, is easily remedied.” Ben jumped up, grabbed my shoulders, pulled me to my feet and guided me to the computer that sat in the small office adjacent to the kitchen. He shoved me down in the chair and signed onto the internet over my shoulder. “Bee, someone with your God given gifts for the game shouldn’t waste any more time in not playing.”

“What, pray tell, are ‘God given gifts’ for the game of poker—the ability to sit stock still for hours, inhale cigar smoke without choking and mainline martinis without passing out? Look, Ben, I’m a forty-year-old spinster now, I can’t afford any more butt spread.”

“Bee, Bee, Bee . . .” Ben took a moment to tsk-tsk over-dramatically. “You are imagining old-fashioned poker. The new game is so different. Texas Hold ’Em is edge-of-your-seat hip.”

“One has to be on the ‘edge of your seat’ when one’s hips are the size of the Lone Star State from sitting too much.”

Ben’s eyes were unnaturally bright. It was beginning to make me nervous. “Bee, really, this game will leave you breathless.”

“What? You poker players do spin aerobics while you’re dealing and Pilates in between bets?”

“Better than that.”

“Better than Pilates? So you have . . .” I paused weightily before saying, “
sex
when you play then?”

Ignoring my attempt at sarcasm and not running with my invitation to tease, Ben shifted into what the family called “focus mode.” Uh-oh. He leaned over my shoulder and began to manipulate the mouse. In a few moments, he was signed onto an online poker game, one of eight players in a game of Texas Hold ’Em. I didn’t know there was such a thing as online poker, but I was so wary of interacting with strangers from the internet that even lurking in chat-rooms scared me, much less participating in one. Gambling online seemed akin to kamikaze behavior. I knew he played in a Friday night face-to-face game with his buddies every week but apparently he was brushing up his poker skills online too. I felt Ben’s body electrify with tension. He began muttering at the computer screen, oblivious to me. It reminded me of the time he’d gotten addicted to Pac-Man and flunked out of engineering school. “Horse Doc, you’d better watch it. Sara90210 is going to take you out.”

“Ben?”

He looked at me, blinking blankly. “How can Judge and Jury be so stupid? He’s gotta know what she’s got in her hand. Look at that bet, would you?”

I followed his index finger to the screen. What did “raising” mean? I’d barely mastered Old Maid, how was I supposed to learn a game where the stakes had dollar signs attached?

Ben must have forgotten he was supposed to be teaching me what was going on. He whistled under his breath at the cartoon icons sitting around the simulated table on my seventeen-inch screen. A new bet popped up. Horse Doc was “all in.” Someone named Take a Chance Chuck folded before the last card was dealt, which I thought ironic just based on the nomenclature.

The dealer, an intimidating looking dude that reminded me of Samuel L. Jackson as a bad guy, turned over the first three community cards the screen was calling “The Flop.” Suddenly there was a Queen of hearts, three of diamonds and King of clubs face up on the table. Everyone had two cards down, but it seemed they shared the three cards up.

The next round of betting began. Everyone else at the table folded except a player named Lucky Lula who pushed all her chips into the “pot.”

“Lula, you are going to lose it all, girlfriend!” Ben whispered tensely.

“Ben,” I tugged on the sleeve of his golf shirt as the hand ended, and she did indeed lose it all when the dealer flipped a Queen of spades that made the Doc’s other two Queens unbeatable. Lucky Lula wasn’t so lucky after all. Being a natural tightwad myself, I felt her pain.

Ben began typing rapidly on the keyboard and it took me a minute to realize he was in the game of now six players as Rotten Irish Rogue. As I watched him play a half dozen hands, I was surprised to find out I understood the mechanics of the game already. It was
that
easy? Not quite. I played a hand in my head and found mechanics wouldn’t get you far with Hold ’Em. It was a game of strategy. It was a game of luck. It was really scary. I wondered how many people a day were suckered in by thinking they knew how to play, thinking the next hand would be a winner. I guess plenty since Ben thought I could take their money without knowing the game.

Ben was now alternately pounding on the keyboard and muttering invectives at his virtual players. Or were they real people? That was even scarier. I concentrated on following the game not because I was interested, I told myself, but because Ben’s obsession was worrying me. They played hand after hand in which I learned zero strategy. Yikes.

“The strategy escapes me,” I said out loud.

Ben talked to me with an eye on the game. “Some of it’s instinct, some is education, but it could be you are a pure body language player. Lots of women are. You need to play in person, not on the net. Plus, your natural talents would be wasted online.”

Finally, the game ended. Ben had won. I noticed for the first time the sweat that pebbled his forehead. Horse Doc congratulated him, typing, “Good luck at the Big Kahuna in Vegas, Rogue. We all hope you’re the one who can bring Steely Stan down.” The one called Bimbo Bombshell, whose identifying icon looked like Jessica Rabbit on speed and who’d gotten knocked out of the game earlier, echoed the sentiment. “Do it for us, Rogue. We’re rooting for you.”

Ben thanked them both and told them, “Good game. ” As heated as the Hold ’Em had been, even playing distanced by keyboards, screens, icons and mice, I was surprised and frankly, gratified, to see this good sportsmanship. I was also relieved to see Ben had only won forty-nine dollars. Even though he might be a candidate for Gamblers Anonymous at least he wasn’t going broke online. The local game was another story. I was going to have to check into that. And Vegas, well, I shuddered to think how much he might lose there.

Suddenly, Ben let loose with an explosive sigh and slumped in my office chair, which I’d given up to him after, in the heat of a hand, he’d nearly squashed me to death. After about half a minute, in which I wondered if he hadn’t suffered a stroke, he attacked the keyboard again, typing his way onto another online table, swearing mightily when there was a waiting list, and going in search of an empty table.

That was it. I’d had enough. I jammed my hands on my hips and yelled: “Hello? Earth to Ben!”

He ignored me, signing onto a new game. Finally, I yanked the chair back so the keyboard was out of reach.

“Hey, Bee! They’re waiting on my bet.”

I stomped a foot, the impact diluted a bit because it was the foot without the heel and I wobbled. “They’ll just have to wait.”

“What is your problem?” Ben asked, still letting his gaze stray to the computer screen. I moved in front of it. He frowned.

“Look, I’ve had the week from hell—I turned forty, lost my fiancé and my job in that order. Now my darling brother is in my house ignoring me and my miseries in favor of some stupid card game on the computer. I know life up to now has been all about Ben, but guess what? Newsflash: the next forty years are going to be all about Belinda!”

Ben blinked, the only time in our lifetime I’d seen him struck dumb with amazement. “Wow. I didn’t know you minded me being selfish.”

I almost smiled because the comment was so like my brother. He didn’t apologize for his flaw, just how it affected me. He might be a lot of things but hypocritical wasn’t one of them. Considering the king of hypocrisy I had been about to marry, I had to appreciate Ben’s honesty. “Well, I do mind your self-absorption sometimes. Now, speaking of which, tell me about The Big Kahuna,” I demanded, realizing I had to keep an eye on his growing addiction. “Would it happen to be in Vegas at the time you wanted to take me for
my
birthday present?”

Ben had the grace to look a little sheepish. “Yes, but I want to take you because I want you to have as much fun as I’m having playing. It’s a brain game and at the same time a total adrenaline rush. Better than chess and more exciting than bungee jumping. You just need to win once, Bee and you’ll be hooked. It’s not about the money. And you can see how supportive everyone is, even in the heat of competition. It’s not all that bad as far as hobbies go, sis. Besides there are other things to do in Vegas, considering your new, ah, liberated taste in dress, you might find a new job in no time . . .”

“Very funny,” I told him, cracking a smile, relieved to see my brother did still exist within this poker obsessed man.

“Really, Bee, Vegas is a cool town. It’s the best place to forget your troubles, cuz there’s just too much to see and do. You have more world class performers within one city’s limits than probably anywhere in the world. You can hear Celine Dion, walk across the street and watch David Copperfield and then go next door and enjoy Cirque du Soleil. If you’re tired of just watching, get pampered at a spa, dance beyond dawn, shop for the best of everything under the sun. You deserve it all. Nothing is too good for my favorite sister.”

“Only sister,” I corrected. “Only, penniless, unemployed sister . . .”

“Come on, Bee, at best, it will be a great vacation—maybe you’ll fall in love and win a million dollars. At worst, it will be a change of scene and you’ll learn a little something about your bro’s favorite hobby.”

“As long as it stays a hobby,” I warned carefully, not wanting to admit out loud that it had advanced to the next level already. He just grinned and tried to get a look around my heinie at the screen when the computer dinged.

“Who’s this Steely Stan guy?”

Ben wrinkled his brow. “He’s a pro on the World Poker Tour. This guy gives poker a bad rep because he’s such a poor sport and a big head. He thinks he’s so cool, running around everywhere in his shades with at least two different women on his arm at a time, squashing amateurs in his wake. He thinks he’s untouchable and that makes him dangerous.”

I raised my eyebrows. Hmm. Ben was taking this a little too personally. “Isn’t that the point of the sport: to win?”

“Yeah, but you see how supportive all the players are, and he isn’t like that.” Ben ground his molars together so hard his jaw popped out on the right side. He only did that when he was really upset. Or maniacally driven. Focus mode. Hmm. “It’s time for someone to take him down and I want to see it happen or, better yet, make it happen. Steely Stan is the celebrity pro who’ll play the four amateurs to make it to the final round of this Hold ’Em tournament. Please say you’ll go with me, Bee.”

I could see clearly that this Vegas vacation was about Ben and some weird vendetta against a larger-than-life stranger and not about me, no matter what he said. But, the truth was, I was too afraid that his poker obsession was out of control to let him go alone. His focus mode was usually properly directed, like on succeeding in business, but the Pac-Man obsession nearly got him kicked out of college. It was only when I stepped in that I got him to switch majors and actually graduate. I shivered when I thought how he might have ended up, bartending in some dark dive living on those little martini onions, one hand on the Pac-Man control.