Flushed E-Book

Joseph Mulak

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

After living in the shadow of his older brother, Ivan Wells knows his place in life. Never one to take responsibility for his actions, he spends his days eking a living by playing poker at the local casino.

Ivan is comfortable with his lot, until a long-forgotten woman from his past reappears.Hurtling into a heady relationship with the mysterious Sonya Lewis, Ivan’s existence takes on new life. But then his ex-wife shows up, with news that makes it difficult to turn her away.

Torn, Ivan finds himself faced with complicated decisions. Will he finally learn to take control of his own destiny?

Leseprobe

FLUSHED

JOSEPH MULAK

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2014 Joseph Mulak

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For Alicia,

a love story.

1

Casinos are horrible places. Every facet of a casino is designed to keep people from leaving and throwing their hard-earned money around like they're high-rollers, thinking they're having a good time even though they're losing their shirts.

That's why whenever I walk inside, I head past the slot machines—those are designed to keep you feeding quarters and maybe get a small payout now and then, usually less than what you've already put into it. I ignore the roulette and craps tables. These are games of pure chance. I have no use for them. The poker room is what I'm after.

The room is set up four tables deep and six tables long. There's space for up to ten people at each, but I don't recall ever seeing any of them full. There's usually a max of six or seven, and even that's pretty rare.

When I get to the tables, I make sure to choose one where I don't recognize any of the other players. When people see you there too often, they catch on to the game and become leery of you. Not only that, but they'll also warn others and it doesn't take long before you build a reputation for being a player.

Most of the locals tend to stick to the slots. Poker is a slow game and a large investment of time. If you're a decent player, you can be there for hours before you lose your stack. Slot machines are quick. Feed machine. Pull lever. Lose. Repeat.

The poker tables are most often occupied by tourists. These are never in short supply since Aspen Falls is the only casino for at least a hundred miles in any direction, so there are always new people coming in. I doubt it's likely I'd be recognized by anyone, but it never hurts to be careful.

I picked a table with five people, not counting the dealer. She gave me a knowing look as soon as I sat down. All the dealers knew me and they knew why I was there. None of them cared. If you're at the poker tables, you're playing with your money and winning someone else's. Everyone brings their cash to the game. The casino makes money either way since they just rake a portion of the pot as their fee for running the game. The only time they care about players being at the table is when they're cheating, which is harder to do anyway since only the dealers are allowed to touch the deck.

I always play Texas Hold 'Em. I prefer Five Card Draw, but you don't find it in casinos anymore. You're pretty much stuck with Hold 'Em, Omaha, or Seven Card Stud. Hold 'Em is the lesser evil in my opinion.

The usual etiquette when you first sit down at a table with a bunch of strangers is to introduce yourself, and they do the same. I dispense with this courtesy since not many of them care who they're playing with. Plus, the less personal you get with them, the easier it is to take their money. This is why I also try to keep the small talk to a minimum. I'm there for one reason. To make money.

I sized up the competition. Three men and two women. The first guy looked like a trucker. He kept wiping the sweat off his palms by rubbing them on his plaid shirt, then stroking his grey beard. Now and then, he would tug at his hair out of frustration. If he pulled any harder, it would have come out at the root. The second guy, youngest at the table, would have fit in better in California with his beige shorts, white T-shirt, and sandals. Not so much in Northern Ontario. Not in spring, at least. He kept running his fingers through his bleached hair, spiked to several sharp points as if he was worried the three containers of gel weren't going to hold it in place. The aviator sunglasses were a nice touch, though. They almost took your attention away from the smug grin—a direct result of the large stack in front of him, which he kept rearranging when he wasn't playing with his hair. Everything about him screamed, “Hey! I mooch off my rich parents and I've never had to work a day in my life.” The third guy, remaining calm, kept stroking his well-trimmed beard, deep in thought. And he was always deep in thought when playing. He should have rubbed it down to the bone by now. If he wasn't doing that, he was adjusting his glasses.

The large, redheaded woman who sat two seats down from me had her hair up in some extravagant coiffure. I'd bet good money she'd been to the salon that very day. Her outfit, a purple blouse with matching pants, looked like it cost more than my rent. This didn't include the jewelry she wore. She'd bathed in perfume earlier in the day and the scent overpowered every other in the room. This one had money. Lots of it. She didn't care if she won or lost. She was just killing time until her husband got bored of losing a small fortune at the craps table, and so she could impress her friends back home by telling them she debased herself enough to play a genuine poker game with the local riffraff.

The last player was the one I'd have to watch out for. A slim blonde wearing a tight miniskirt and white blouse. The top two buttons were undone, showing off plenty of cleavage. I'd have to keep reminding myself not to let her distract me. She was the type of girl who could lean over the table the right way and make any man sitting there fold their hand because she smiled and asked politely.

How the smug guy had such a huge stack was a mystery. He couldn't take his eyes off the blonde's breasts long enough to glance at his cards.

My normal modus operandi, method of operation for those of you who don't watch C.S.I., is to spend the first few hands learning my opponents' tells. Tells are little habits people have that give away what kind of hand they're holding. Most professionals can learn what theirs are and train themselves not to use them. Amateurs aren't normally aware they even have any, so they don't bother trying to correct them. The trucker's biggest tell was so obvious I could see why he was losing. Everyone else must have picked up on it too. Whenever he had a good hand, he snatched up a bunch of checks off his stack, not even paying attention to how much he was betting, waiting for his turn so he could toss them into the center. Anybody with half a brain would see this and fold right away, despite his pretending to hesitate for a brief moment before tossing the checks on the table.

The redhead had a nervous habit of rubbing her nose. She did this whenever she bluffed. I'd re-raise and she'd fold.

The young, cocky guy…well, I didn't bother learning his tells. That would have been a waste of time. The guy thought he was one of those poker superstars on TV, which was why he wore the aviators. Many of the pros wear shades because it hides their eyes so they don't give away their hand. This is also why many of these same pros keep their cards face down on the table and if they need to refresh their memory, they lift the corner of the cards just enough to peek at them. This guy held his cards almost at eye level and I could see them in the reflection.

I got my stack up pretty high in record time. I'm careful not to win too much. You have to lose a hand on purpose now and then to make it look good. With these people, I didn't see the point. None of them knew how to play. They knew the general rules like how to bet and the hierarchy of hands, but they didn't know how to bluff or how to read their opponents.

Most people criticize my strategy. You'll notice as soon as the first two cards are dealt to each player, most people at the table will fold right away if they don't like their cards.

I stay in until at least the flop is dealt. The reason for this is simple: if my opponent is dealt an ace/king and I get a two/three in my hand and the flop comes down with either a two or a three, or both, I have a good chance of winning as long as no ace or king comes up in the turn or river. I mean, I'm not stupid about it. I'm not going all-in on a two/three before the flop, but I hate folding until I at least see those first three cards.

I always play the low-stakes tables too. I don't play high stakes because I don't like gambling with that much money at one time, and I'm not looking to try and make huge amounts of money. Even at a low-stakes table, I can come out with a hundred or two by the end of the night. Making that much two or three nights a week gives me rent for the month and keeps me in TV dinners. I didn't need much. I wasn't married and I didn't have any kids. The only person depending on me was me.

As the night wore on, the cocky guy was getting pissed off with me. I watched his smug grin disappear a little bit with each hand, his stack getting smaller and smaller. The guy had a temper on him and he was starting to lose it. I have no idea why he didn't just walk away. That's what causes most gambling addictions. Most people refuse to quit when they're down. They want to at least win enough back to break even. But when they're up, they can't quit because they're on a roll. This guy was on his way to becoming a full-fledged addict if he wasn't one already.

One particular hand where I took thirty bucks from him, which is pretty decent for a low stakes table, he slammed his fists down hard enough that my stack shook and almost toppled over. The dealer had to tell him to calm down a few times. I've seen security escort people out of the casino for this type of behavior enough times that I wouldn't call it a rarity.

The irony is, no one was having a good time—other than me, of course. I think the whole point of casinos is the experience, and to have fun. A “good time” is only had when you're making money. Which would mean there aren't a lot of people having fun in any casino.

I have to be honest; even though I was winning, I wasn't really on my game that night. I was a bit distracted and it had nothing to do with the blonde and her tits. It did involve a woman, though.

There was a girl who came into the poker room about a half-hour after I'd sat down. Other than the poker tables, there isn't any place to sit. No one comes in unless they intend to play. Anyone who just wants to watch doesn't bother to come to a casino. They flip on the TV at one o'clock in the morning and watch the pros.

But this girl didn't sit at a table. She wandered around the room like a lost child looking for her parents. Every once in a while she'd stop and watch a game for a bit, then continue. One of the first things I noticed about her was that she was the type not many people noticed.

Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, making her face look rounder than it already was. The flower-patterned dress she wore was long enough to reach almost to the floor. It didn't suit her larger body type but showed enough cleavage that most guys probably wouldn't care she was overweight.

I kept my eye on her. I couldn't help it. She eventually found herself at our table. She lingered longer than she had at the others, intent on the game.

I surprised myself. It normally takes quite the breathtaking woman to distract me while working, but this one managed to do it without being the type to turn heads. I think it had something to do with her eyes; they were sad and lonely. The eyes of someone who'd lived a hard life and it didn't look like it was about to get any better.

Whatever it was, it wasn't her smile. I never saw it. She didn't have much to smile about.

I waited for her to leave—or at least move on to a different table—but she kept hovering over our game. She kept stealing glances at me, watching each decision I made with an interested eye. I had to leave. She seemed too interested in the game and it bothered me. She only spent a minute or two at any of the other tables, but once she got to ours, she set up camp and stayed for at least fifteen. I was too distracted to continue, and up a little over a hundred bucks. Not the best take I've ever had, but it would have to do.

The girl's eyes followed me, as I walked back into the main part of the casino to cash in my checks. The cashier gave me a shy smile as she counted.

“Slow night?” she asked.

“You could say that.” I didn't return the smile. I kept looking around to see if the girl had followed me out of the poker room. So far she hadn't.

“You coming back tomorrow night?”

I just shook my head as I took the money and started to make my way back through the labyrinth toward the front doors.

Five or six waitresses offered me a free drink but I ignored them. I come to play, not drink. It had very little to do with them.

I exited through the front doors and breathed a sigh of relief. The casino was unusually warm, and it was nice to have the cool night air hit me.

Aspen Falls is one of those towns big enough to have a casino, yet small enough to not have much of a nightlife. There are a few bars in the downtown core, so there's quite a bit of activity in that part of town on Friday and Saturday nights. But other than that and the casino, which is open twenty-four hours, not much happens. I don't mind. After listening to the cacophony of noises in the casino, I looked forward to some quiet as I walked home.

There are no buses after eleven. The city council doesn't see a need for it. The transit system seems to be the biggest complaint among Aspen Falls' residents, and I tend to agree. I often enjoy the walk home, which only takes me about twenty minutes to a half-hour, but some nights it would be nice to be able to take a bus and get there quicker. Though I'm not sure why. I wasn't going home to much. I lived in a small apartment, which is fine since it was just me. Once there, I'd pop a TV dinner into the microwave and sit in front of the television to see if there was anything good on. If not, I'd pop a movie into the VCR—yes, I said VCR—and pass out in the chair. Not much point in getting up and walking over to the bed. My easy chair, the only piece of living room furniture I owned, was comfortable enough.

This was my existence. I wouldn't call it a life. Since my wife left, I hadn't had much of one.

2

I learned to play poker from my father, Martin Wells. Well, the mechanics of the game at least. He didn't know enough about the game to teach me the right way.

Dad worked at the local college in the shipping/receiving department. Though he never said as much, he hated it. Every evening he stomped through the front door, slamming it behind him, and before he could be bothered to utter so much as a hello to either his wife or his two children, he greeted the liquor cabinet first. Booze was his first love.

This first drink within moments of his arrival would be one of many.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing my father of alcoholism. I don't believe he needed to drink. My father never let his family suffer financially or otherwise to pay for his whiskey. He was stressed out from work, family difficulties, finances and whatever else may have been going on. Drinking helped him to relax.

I spent much of my childhood listening to my father complain about work. When he would sit in his favorite armchair, after pouring himself the first glass of whiskey, he would begin a tirade about his day. This was directed toward my mother, but not at her. There was always something for him to complain about. He was passed up for the supervisor position yet again, or so-and-so called in sick yet again, he's so unreliable he should be canned. Everybody should be canned according to my father. Everybody but him.

By listening to him going on every afternoon, one would get the impression there was nothing my father liked about the occupation he'd held since graduating high school. This wasn't the case. There was one thing. He liked the hours. Dad worked Monday to Friday, from eight in the morning until four. He once told me he liked these hours because it allowed him to spend more time in the evening with my brother and me. I never believed this for a second. My father spent more time with the television than with us, providing the family with a great service by keeping an eye on it to make sure it didn't get up and walk away.

My mother, Carolyn, was a nurse in a home for the elderly. She worked night shifts from eight until eight. This meant my parents only saw each other for a few hours in the evenings between when Dad got home and Mom left. This little time together saved their marriage. You never saw two more miserable people when they were together. They could sit in the same room for over than hour without once acknowledging each other's existence. Dad would watch TV and mom would read a mystery novel, never even glancing up at her husband.

My brother, Doug, was twelve at the time. Our parents had deemed him old enough to stay home by himself but not quite responsible enough to look after his nine-year-old brother. This conflicted with my father's weekly poker game since it was held at a friend's home. Moving the game to our house wasn't an option. Four guys who chose to relieve their stress every Wednesday night with gambling, cigars, beer, and dirty jokes wouldn't have been tolerated by my mother. Even if she wasn't there when it happened.

Of course, my father wasn't going to let anything get in the way of his only social activity, but there was no one available to look after me. Marty Wells solved this problem the only way he knew how. He took me with him, always with the stern instruction that I was never to tell my mother about it. When I suggested he let her know ahead of time he was going to bring me was when he had provided me with the one piece of marital advice I would ever get from my father, which may have worked in his marriage but certainly didn't in my own. The advice was, “It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

Mom would have to have been the world's biggest idiot to not know what was going on. Dad lost no less than three hundred dollars a week at these poker games, so my mother was either aware he was gambling the money away or she was under the mistaken impression that my father had acquired a drug habit.

The poker games took place in a garage owned by a man named Harold Booker, who was old enough to be my grandfather. He told dirty jokes despite the presence of a nine-year-old boy. After he would tell the punch line, if I happened to be standing within his reach at the time, he would slap me on the back, still laughing, and say, “Don't worry, boy. You'll get it when you're older.”

The garage stank of cigars. Save for a small wooden table with four mismatched chairs around it, it was empty. This meant there was nothing for me to do while I waited for my father's friends to clean him out, so I ended up watching and learning the rules of the game.

Though the other men tolerated my presence, I'm pretty sure this was only because they needed my father to be their fourth player. If this meant having the brat tag along, so be it. I never felt welcome at the card games. There were even a few comments made that Dad only brought me to help him cheat. No one took this idea seriously, of course. During the time I was witness to these weekly poker games, I had never seen him win. Well, a few hands here and there, but my father was always broke by the end of the night.

I'm not sure what the attraction was, but these weekly poker sessions were the beginning of my obsession. I even got my parents to buy me a poker set for Christmas. So now that I had a deck of cards and chips, I set up mock games at the kitchen table, acting as each player. Of course, since I knew what each hand was, it didn't help me to improve.

The next step was convincing my parents to buy me a poker game for our Tandy 1000 EX. This wasn't an easy task since my father could be very frugal with money if the purchase sought didn't contain alcohol. Eventually, I wore them down and my only other obstacle became fighting my brother for the computer. Since he was three years older, he always won. But when I complained to Dad about it, he would always relent, if only to get me out of his hair.

I found the computer game to be the best of the available resources for learning the game. The books I got my brother to take out of the library for me helped with theory but, as with most things, practice was the best way to learn. I didn't learn much from Dad and his poker buddies since they were amateurs and didn't strive to improve their game.

Texas Hold 'Em didn't exist in those days. Or if it did, I never heard about it. Five Card Draw was the more popular game back then, which could be why I've always favored it over any other. I've been playing it since I was nine.

I can admit as my poker skills improved, I started to get cocky about it. Especially toward my father. It drove him insane.

“You need to learn to bluff,” I said one night as we were driving home.

“What the hell do you know about it?” My father was a quiet man, giving the impression of infinite patience. Once he had a few drinks in him, however, that patience was nowhere to be found and he was irritable with everyone. Especially me.

“I know you need to learn to bluff,” I told him. “It wouldn't hurt if you stopped betting so high just because you get a decent hand, too. Anybody can tell what you're holding. That's why you always lose.”

“Jesus,” my father said, shaking his head. “The kid gets a computer game and suddenly he's an expert.”

Even to a nine-year-old, it was obvious my father resented any unsolicited advice on how to improve his game so I never mentioned it again.

But I strove to keep improving. It got to the point where it even started to affect my schoolwork. When I got to high school, there were a few meetings between my parents and my teachers involving how my obsession with poker was the cause of my grades plummeting. Which, wasn't the big issue according to the teachers. Some of the other parents had been complaining about me taking their kids' lunch money during recess poker games.

So, I got the speech from my parents about how disappointed they were. Well, from my mom anyway. I don't think Dad cared too much. He hardly said a word about it. Just sat there as mom went on for almost an hour.

I didn't see the big deal. Those kids were old enough to know what they were doing, so it wasn't my fault.

I kept playing poker against other kids at school until I was eighteen and able to go to the local casino. That first night, I left with over two hundred bucks in my pocket. Since then, I kept going back and walking out with more money than I started with. I was making enough I didn't see any need to get a “real job,” as my parents kept suggesting.

Everything seemed to be going fine too until, one day, that woman entered my life.

Three nights after I had first seen her at the casino, I went back. There was no need for me to go every night. I wasn't trying to get rich. Just make enough to keep existing.

The place was swamped. There were people everywhere, making it hard to move around. The slots were chiming non-stop and the idle chatter grew to deafening proportions. This was unusual for the time of year. The busy season is in the summer. Since it was spring, I wasn't expecting it.

I don't like crowds. I've been told I have an anxiety disorder. Not by anyone who would know. I've never been in counseling or to see a shrink. But people think they're experts because they've read a pamphlet or seen a movie of the week. Whenever I'm in a large group of people, I have a hard time breathing, I feel this tightness in my chest that restricts it. My whole body tenses up and starts shaking. I sweat like crazy too. I don't know if this means I have a disorder or if I just don't like people very much.

I've had to learn to cope with this, though, considering what I do for a living. I've had to force myself to not make a break for the front doors every time I walk in. This is another reason why I only go a few nights a week. It's better for my nerves.

As soon as I set foot on the ugly, psychedelic carpet, I saw her. She sat on a bench, facing the front doors so she could see everyone who walked in.

I could have sworn I saw her breathe a sigh of relief when she saw me. I couldn't even guess why that might be. She did look a bit familiar, but I had no idea where I might have met her. Maybe she had one of those faces.

I did my best to ignore her as I maneuvered through the crowd, making my way to the poker room, which wasn't easy. There wasn't a lot of room to begin with. They had the place packed tight with slots and every possible casino game you could imagine, so space was pretty tight even without an overabundance of bodies. I ended up bumping into a few people as I tried to make my way through. One elderly lady, so intent on the slot machine she was playing you'd have thought I could have taken a sledgehammer to the back of her head without her noticing, became extremely irate when I accidentally nudged her on my way past. She yelled a few obscenities at me and called me names worthy of someone who'd run over her dog and backed up to do it again.

I turned around, intending to at least mutter an apology to the old woman. But the words caught in my throat when I saw I was being followed. I forgot about apologizing and turned to continue my way to the poker room, hoping to lose the woman in the crowd. Besides, the old lady probably deserved to be bumped into. She was probably selling babies on the black market or something.

It never once occurred to me this girl could have been following me because she thought I was attractive and wanted to ask me on a date. I'm not the kind of guy women ask on dates. I'm more the kind of guy women run away from because they think I want to see if they'll fit in my freezer.

It also never occurred to me she may not have been following me at all.

Luckily, the poker room wasn't as busy as the rest of the casino. Only a few tables were occupied that particular evening. I took a moment to study the people at the tables. I picked one that had three people sitting at it—not counting the dealer of course—instead of one of the others with four or five. This may seem odd since one would assume you could win more money off four or five people as opposed to three. But anyone who assumed that hadn't noticed what I had.

An older gentleman looking to be in his early fifties, wearing an Armani suit and a Rolex. Personally, anyone who spends more money on a watch than most people spend on a used car has way too much money. I was about to do this guy a favor.

Not that I thought for a second I'd be able to make any kind of actual dent in this guy's wallet. I probably wasn't going to take enough to cover the cost of his tie.

The first hand hadn't even been dealt before I saw her walk into the room. I expected her to roam around the room, watching all the games, as she had done three nights ago. But she didn't. She still walked around a bit, but I suspect this was more to alleviate suspicion that she was anything other than a casual observer. She always made sure not to stray too far away from my table.

It's hard to concentrate when you know you're being watched. Especially when you have no idea why you're being watched. I spent more time searching through my memory, trying to figure out if I had known this woman somewhere in my distant past than I did on the game at hand. As a result, I made some very poor decisions. In a way, this may have worked to my benefit. The older guy's smile grew each time he took the pot, which was more often than I would have liked near the beginning of the game. But the errors I made probably led the others at the table to believe I was an amateur out for nothing more than a good time, just like them.

A few of my mistakes probably reduced me to nothing more than a bumbling idiot in their eyes, which wasn't a bad thing. Nothing inspires overconfidence in people than to make them underestimate their opponent. In a game like poker, overconfidence is one of the worst mistakes you can make.

I glanced over at the woman more than a few times. I'm sure it was obvious to everyone that I was looking at her. They probably thought I was attracted to her, which wasn't far from the truth at all. Something was appealing about her.

She held something in her hand. A torn piece of paper. She flicked it absentmindedly as she walked.

Despite being distracted for a good portion of the game, I still walked away with more money than usual. When I cashed out, I had a little over three hundred dollars. This was a decent amount and I'm a full believer in quitting while I'm ahead.