The River

Andre Mateus

My 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. 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.

History repeats itself.

People are not what they appear to be.

And Aces beat Deuces.

My opponent shakes his fist in the air as dozens of people rush the table to pour champagne all over him. He just won a million dollars.

I quickly move through the crowd to shake his hand, find enough composure to say my obligatory congratulations and run out of the casino. I just lost a million dollars.

Finding a nice, empty spot by the river, I stand leaning on the railing, thinking about what went wrong. It’s not too hard. I should have folded that hand the minute I saw it. A professional would have, so how can I call myself one? I wanted to play it. No, I needed to play it! My dad was right. I’m an addict. Or maybe they’re not such different things. Isn’t a professional just an addict who wins more than he loses? People seem fine with addicts, as long as they win. What no one likes is a loser. And that’s me.

Feeling in my pocket for a cigarette, I pull out my lucky 5-dollar chip instead.

“Not so lucky today.”

I shake my head and throw my arm back, preparing to toss it in the river and stopping mid-motion.

The river. It’s so quiet. So peaceful. So... ...inviting.

Climbing over the railing, I say to myself I’m just going for a quick swim, a little moment of pause and relaxation to end a crappy day on a good note, until some distant voice I don’t recognize as my own shakes that dumb notion away.

“What the hell are you doing? There’s another tournament that’s about to start!”

I smile, squeeze the 5-dollar chip in my hand and climb back down.

It’s not about winning or losing, it’s how you play the game, right?

Andre Mateus is a writer, screenwriter and comic book writer from Portugal with a couple of published short stories and a feature film, Ladrões de Tuta e Meia, produced in 2019, along with a webseries, Avós na Net. Internationally, he authored several comic books and two of his short film scripts, Blood & Tears and The Last Supper, finished at the top of various screenwriting competitions. You may find these and more of my works on my website.