Four of a Kind (38 page)

“Being bad feels pretty fucking excellent, doesn’t it?” asked Robin.

“Please don’t curse,” said Carla. “And yes. It does.”

While Carla drove the BMW (Robin was forbidden from getting behind the wheel), Bess worked her iPhone trying to find a hotel room. Spontaneity had its headaches. Most of the big resorts were booked solid. There was crazy talk about turning around, and heading north toward Connecticut’s Native American casinos Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods. But that would have added another hour to the trip. On the sixth try, Bess secured a suite for the women at Harrah’s, a white elephant of a resort right on the ocean, next to the Trump Marina. None of them had ever been to Harrah’s. Only Bess had been to Atlantic City before—with her father when she was a toddler. She didn’t remember the trip, but she had a photo of herself, white blond, chubby belly in a green bikini, on Fred’s shoulders on the boardwalk. She thought about that photo, and let herself miss her youth and her dad. But only for a second. The women hadn’t come for nostalgia. They’d come to play.

The mood in the car started out rowdy, then dialed way down while Bess hunted for a hotel room. With that business concluded, the mood settled into an anticipatory calm. The drive took a while—over two hours. The women talked a bit, but each was in her own head, thinking about what she’d left behind in Brooklyn—unresolved relationships, tough conversations to come, the decisions that had to be made and then lived with. Just as every relationship and decision up to this point had brought them to where they were now—exit 75 on the Garden State Parkway—every future action (or inaction) would carry them to the next phase, what- or wherever that might be. Each woman knew that she was on the brink of ending one part of her life, and beginning another. They were speeding toward the clear dividing moment between “what was” and “what will be.” This night would be more than an impromptu road trip for a (diverse) quartet of former strangers, now close friends. Harrah’s—or, as they decided to call it, “Hurray’s”—seemed as good a place as any to make a change.

A poker player mantra about living in the moment: “The past is history, the future’s a mystery.” You had to check, fold, call, or raise each hand based on limited information, previous experience, and gut intuition, and accept the consequences of your bet, regardless of the outcome. Play smart and bold, no matter how many chips you hold. Leave nothing on the table.

They arrived at Hurray’s, checked in—no luggage—walked through the clanging, blinking casino floor, and went up to their suite. The consensus about the accommodations? Sopranos Chic. Haute Tacky. Bess said, “New Jersey Style.”

Alicia said, “Now, there’s an oxymoron to add to my list. I’ll put that between ‘military intelligence’ and ‘compassionate conservatism.’ ”

They threw open the curtains to let in the last rays of sunlight, showcasing the spotty carpet and faded furniture fabric. Hardly mattered.
They hadn’t come to sit in a hotel suite. It served a function, and was comfortably enormous. Two bedrooms with twin beds, a large lounge area with a full bar and fridge stocked with fruit, cheese, crackers, candy, cookies, half a dozen chilled bottles. Bess suggested opening some champagne.

Robin said, “We can’t drink before we play.”

Alicia reeled back in mock shock. “Who are you, and what have you done with Robin Stern?”

“Let’s get some food,” said Robin, ignoring Alicia. “And then we’ll play. I want a full stomach—which should take me two bites—and a clear head.”

Carla said, “I noticed a steakhouse in the lobby.”

“Fine,” said Robin.

“You can eat steak?” asked Bess.

“If I cut a fillet into tiny pieces, I can handle it,” said Robin.

The Longhorn Steakhouse was located, to their delight, on the mezzanine level overlooking the poker circle. The women got a table along the balcony and could peer down at some three-dozen tables. The aerial view helped them get the lay of the land. A desk, like a restaurant maître d’ stand, blocked the only entrance into the poker circle. The area wasn’t a room per se with four walls and a door, but rather an open-air large circle with a hip-high demi-wall looped around it. At the desk, an organizer logged a player’s preference into a computer (game type—Hold ’Em, five card draw, etc.—ante maximums, number of players in your party), and then you waited in a cordoned-off outer area for an open seat at an appropriate table. When your name flashed on a digital display over the organizer’s desk, you presented yourself to him, and were escorted to your seat by an usher. Only players, dealers, managers, ushers, and servers were allowed inside the circle. Spectators could watch from the other side of the demi-wall. If spectators got too loud, they were asked to leave the area by beefy security guards who patrolled the circle wall.

The action was intense and quiet. Compared to the noisy, blinking,
and ka-chinging on the casino floor, the poker circle was a veritable tomb. Huge sums of money were being won and lost down there. And yet, the players acted stoic, unfazed by the dizzying redistribution of chips after each hand. Even though it was nighttime in a windowless casino, half the players wore sunglasses and caps pulled low over their eyes. Some of the players drank cocktails; some had bottles of water. No smoking, which the ladies appreciated (except Robin). And hardly any talking. The tone was serious, somber, and scary as hell.

The Brooklyn women searched the hundreds of players at dozens of tables for others of their kind. But they counted only five women down there. Three cocktail waitresses, one usher, and a manager.

Robin said, “Women don’t play poker. They play slots and roulette.”

Bess said, “Maybe being female is to our advantage. We might throw the men off their game with our wiles.”

Robin said, “You’re the only one here with wiles, Bess.”

Carla said, “Do the other players look intimidating to you?”

The four women leaned over the mezzanine railing for a closer look at the pockmarked, prison-pallor seedy, shadowed, mysterious, ruthless gamblers below.

Bess shrugged and said, “Men are men.”

“They’re
terrifying
,” said Alicia. “Especially that one.” She pointed at a three-hundred-pound man with a full beard, lumberjack shirt, bulging tattooed forearms, black shades, and a trucker hat. “He looks like he escaped from a ZZ Top video, and hasn’t left that seat since. We’re sure we want to do this?”

“Yes,” said Carla. “Let’s go now, before any of you chicken out.”

They charged the meal to the room, stopped at an ATM for cash (each woman would start with $500), and then approached the poker circle desk.

Robin said, “MILF, party of four.”

“Pardon?” asked the organizer, a slicked-back thirty-year-old man in a blazer.

“Texas Hold ’Em, five and ten dollar blinds, four of us,” Robin stated.

He tapped into his computer, and said, “I can seat all of you now—if you want to play at separate tables. But if you want to sit together, it’ll be a few minutes.”

The women huddled.

“If we sit together, we’ll be playing for each other’s money,” said Carla. “Makes no sense.”

“I don’t want to be alone!” said Alicia.

Bess asked the organizer, “Do you have two seats together?”

“I can put two of you at the same table, and two singles.”

“That’ll work,” said Bess. “I’ll sit with Alicia. Robin and Carla, you go alone.”

Ushers showed the women to their tables.

Alicia’s legs were shaking. Literally knocking between the knees. She loved to play poker back in New York. Her after-work game with the guys was trash talk, under the table groping with Finn, and beer guzzling. The mothers’ game was gossip, true confessions, and cocktails. Fun and, ahem, a
game
.

These men weren’t playing a friendly game. This wasn’t fun. It was work. For some of the players, poker was their livelihood.

Her pal Carla’s poker breakthrough had been about the joy of taking risks. Alicia had a poker-related breakthrough, too—about the joy of active escapism. When she was playing cards with her friends and colleagues, Alicia’s anxieties, shyness, and nervousness dissolved. She opened up, relaxed. Worry and stress shed off her like a snakeskin. If Alicia hadn’t learned to open up while playing poker, Finn wouldn’t have seen her as a sexual object. She’d have remained the celibate shrew.

Which was, ironically, exactly what Alicia felt like when she took a seat at the table of men. None of them looked at her. Not even a glance to see who’d come to play. A couple of them noticed Bess, but they’d have to be dead not to. They looked at her blond gorgeousness, and then right back at their cards. No reaction, no masculine posturing. None drew himself up and offered to buy her a drink. In this Twilight Zone, even Bess was invisible.

Alicia felt swallowed up by the disregard. When the dealer asked for her cash to exchange for chips, it took her a second to realize he had spoken to her. She fumbled over her bills, and received a pile of chips. No one else said anything.

And then the dealer started flipping cards around the table. Alicia peeked at her pocket cards and almost gasped. A pair of queens, on the very first hand. She tried to stay calm, not to show her excitement. When the bet came to her, she called.

The flop. Another queen. Alicia had three of a kind. She started sweating profusely and immediately. She wondered if the phrase “flop sweat” had come from poker (never occurred to her before, but it made perfect sense). Bess folded when the guy with a crewcut and Bono shades next to her raised the bet to $50. A few folds, a few calls. Alicia reraised to $100. Crewcut saw her raise.

The turn: a rag. Two of spades. Crewcut bet $200. Alicia called. All the other players folded.

The river: another queen. On her very first hand, Alicia had an all but unbeatable four of a kind. Alicia’s stomach had relocated to her knees. Her heart, meanwhile, was threatening to explode out of her chest. Her face? Felt bright red. Her hands? Shaking like mad.

“All in,” she squeaked.

Bess gave her a funny look. She mouthed, “Are you sure?”