Literary Work
THE RIVER Andre Mateus
M
y hands are clammy and my heart is pounding as if it wants to burst through my chest. I take a sip of my overpriced Rum and Coke to calm it down. “Call or fold, sir?” the pretty dealer asks, urging me to make a decision. I look down at the cards in my hand for the first time and see a Seven and a Deuce, the worst starting two in Texas Hold’Em Poker, staring back at me. I can’t help but smile. “Sir?” she asks once more, her face not so pretty when she demands an answer. I play with my lucky 5-dollar chip for a second, trying out her patience, and take another look at my cards. Sadly, they haven’t changed at all. My Head’sup opponent, my final opponent of the night, raised pre-flop, hoping to bully me into folding the blind. But I don’t want to play his game. No. I want to match him. I want to be able to tell this story and say I had the cojones to call a bet with a Seven and a Deuce while a million dollars were on the line. Then again, I don’t want pride to be my downfall. With a million dollars on the line, why not take the safe route, live to fight another round and fold this miserable hand? “Call,” I decide finally, pushing a fourth of my chips across the table. It’s not about winning or losing, it’s how you play the game, right? The dealer, patiently and methodically, starts dealing the flop, the first three of a total of five cards that will be placed on the table, and I detect a slight smirk on my opponent’s face right after the first one is revealed. An Ace. Tricky. Might he have one or is he bluffing? That smirk seemed too well-timed and orchestrated to be real, so he must be trying to bluff me. Or maybe he really has an Ace and that smirk was a double bluff? Sometimes I just hate this game! The dealer shows a King next and ends with a Deuce. My opponent can hardly wait to double his bet. Every rational bone in my body is telling me to cut my losses, fold and hope Lady Luck will be more generous next time.
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My instincts and that Deuce, though, are singing me a different song. One that is muffled by the sound of my father’s voice when he taught me to play on our kitchen table. “The trick to being great at poker is not knowing when to call,” he would say, “it’s knowing when to fold. If you keep calling every bet, you’re not a player. You’re an addict.” And then he’d take a big swig from a bottle of cheap bourbon. Takes one to know one, dad. I reach for my stack and push half of it across. The dealer discards the top card of the deck and shows the Turn. A second Deuce. Suddenly, the smirk is not on my opponent’s face, but on mine. I try to disguise it with another sip of Rum as he taps the table, betting nothing. “I’m all-in,” I say, gathering the rest of my chips. “Got a Deuce?” my opponent asks, flustered, barely getting the words out as he toys around with some chips. Let’s see things from his end. My starting hand being Deuces wouldn’t be likely because if that were the case, I would never have taken so long to call with a pair, and only a fool or a beginner would call with a Deuce without also having an Ace or a King. Since I didn’t raise or re-raise when both of them showed up, it seems pretty clear my hand should not have a Deuce as I’m neither a fool or a beginner. I’m a professional. Right? “There’s only one way to find out,” I reply, all cryptic and mysterious, trying to entice him into making me a whole lot richer in the next few minutes. After some gut-wrenching deliberation, he falls for it and chooses to go all-in as well, revealing a hand of Ace, Ten. I can only imagine how frustrated he got when he saw my Deuce and Seven because he hid it well. I, on the other hand, didn’t. My smirk became a huge smile, which in turn became a horrible expression of shock and terror after the dealer revealed the fifth and final card, the River... ...an Ace. There’s only a handful of indisputable truths in this world.
