School of Fortune (19 page)

Sal looked mystified. “Getting hungry?”

“You're observing body language. Reading between the lines.”

“That's pretty hard to do after a few manhattans,” Sal said.

“Which is why you
Dont. Drink. Them.
Chippa, what was this fellow's name again?”

Cole. His eyes were kind of like coal, come to think of it. “I forget.”

“Did he look rich?”

All four feet ten inches of Aram shot off the couch. “Are we students or pimps? This course is a waste of my good time and two thousand dollars! You are pathetic, miss.”

“I agree,” Patty said. “No offense, Marvy Marla, but that outfit would scare a zebra.”

Marla's lower lip quivered. “Is that the way you all feel?” Every head but Pippa's nodded in vigorous agreement. “Fine!”

She opened her safe and withdrew a piece of parchment paper. Marla signed it, melted some red wax, stamped it with a heart, and tied it up with red ribbon. She flung it in Pippa's lap. “This course is officially over. Everyone has failed but Chippa.”

Pippa unrolled her diploma. It certainly looked official except for one thing. “Where's my name?”

“Fill it in yourself.” Marla headed for the door. “I'm going for a walk.”

“I want my money back!” Aram shouted. “Either my money or my diploma!”

Marla calmly took a big red hat from its red hook. “I repeat: you have all failed the course. You do not have the fundamental humanity to become matchmakers.” “I'll sue!” Patty screamed.

“Be my guest. After five divorces, I know who the killer lawyers are.”

Little old Helen suddenly plastered herself to the front door, impeding Marla's exit. “Make you a deal, miss. We'll play you for our diplomas. One quick game settles it.”

Pippa felt the hair rise along the back of her neck as Marla's face softened into an addict's narcotic smile. “Play?” she echoed.

“You heard me. Poker.”

It all suddenly fell into place. Pippa nearly laughed at her own stupidity. “I'm afraid I don't know a thing about poker,” she said with a winsome smile. “Maybe I'll just leave and let you all sort out the refunds.”

Marla snatched Pippa's diploma away. “You want your diploma, you play for it.”

“But I've only played once in my life!” With Andre in Prague. Strip poker at that.

“Then get your Polack boyfriend to play for you. I've always wanted to see how I stacked up against a champion.”

“Can I please have that back?” Pippa whimpered, on the verge of tears.

“No!” Marla pushed her out the door.

Pippa stood paralyzed in the blinding sunshine, staring at her empty hands. Just a few moments ago they had held a signed diploma, the passport to her new life. Now she was stripped clean. Looted! How could she have stood there, flat-footed as an oaf, as events spi-raled downward?

The limousine door swung open. “Taking a lunch break, Miss Flushowitz?” Mike unstrapped the water bottle lashed to his shin. “You okay? Here, have a drink.”

“Tell me something, Mike. Do you play poker?”

“Now and then, at family holidays. I'm not a habitual gambler or anything.”

“Are you any good?”

He hadn't won a game in his life. All those combinations to remember plus smoke, whiskey, indigestion, football. “It depends on the cards. Why?”

“I'm going to ask a big favor. Five people are starting up a game. I have to play or I lose my diploma. I'd like you to play for me.”

He scratched a little sand out of his ear. “I thought you were all inside making matches.”

“That didn't work out. I told a little white lie, Mike. I said you were the poker champion of Poland. Now everyone wants to play with you. Against you, actually. If you won my diploma back, I would certainly make it worth your while.”

He thought a moment. “Happy to do it! You got me 24/7, remember?”

Pippa took two thousand dollars from her purse. “Here's something for the pot. That's all I know about poker. It takes money.” “Yikes! This is
really
money!”

She watched him fold the thick wad into his pocket. “The lady in the stripes is a little unstable. She thinks you're out here writing a book and playing six games on the Internet at the same time.”

“I'll have to undestabilize her right away.”

“Please don't.” Pippa clutched Mike's sleeve. “Just go along with anything she says. It's good poker strategy. And I wouldn't talk much. Silence is intimidating.”

Mike wasn't sure what she was telling him to do, but he didn't want to let her down. She looked pretty anxious about the diploma. “Let me get this straight. We're not in it for the money.”

“That's right. But you can keep any money you happen to win.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They went inside Marvy Mates. The shades were drawn. Everyone was seated around a heart-shaped coffee table. In front of each player was a small pile of cash and a plastic cup full of whiskey. Aram expertly shuffled the cards. “Have a seat,” he called. “So you're the Polish cham-peen?”

Rather than lie, Mike said nothing. “He doesn't like to talk,” Pippa explained, sitting behind him.

In an effort to sap her opponents' concentration and get out of there by lunch, Marla had seriously unbuttoned the jacket of her turquoise suit. “Hello,” she said. He was kind of cute in a bumpkin-lumpkin way. “Love the uniform. Is that a thinking cap?”

“Enough
small talk.
” Aram smoothly dealt five cards to each player.

“Twenty bucks gets you in. No limits.” As everyone tossed a twenty into the pot, he saw Helen reverently place a small plastic Virgin Mary on the table and rub the statuette's head. “What's that?”

“My good-luck charm.”

Patty frowned. “I thought you were Jewish.”

“So? You want me to put a Torah on the table?”

Marla went to her desk and opened a drawer. She donned a pair of velvet reindeer antlers and returned to the table. “If she can have a good-luck charm, so can I.”

Aram shook his head in disgust. “Kiddies got all their toys? Let's get started then.”

Helen picked up her five cards and uttered a foul oath at her Virgin Mary. “I fold.”

Sal silently placed twenty bucks in the pot. Patty slid twenty in and added twenty.

Mike stared at the cards in his hand. Anything with a picture was good, he remembered. He had one of them, so he put a thousand bucks on the table. For some reason everyone gasped.

“You trying to kill us, Mack?” Marla cried.

“He's not the Polish champion for nothing,” Pippa snapped back. “Where's that diploma?”

“In my bra.” Marla put a thousand bucks on the table then added another hundred.

Aram folded. Sal and Patty asked for two more cards so Mike held up two fingers, too. He saw that they discarded two cards, so he did the same. Sal folded. So did Patty. Mike added another thousand bucks to the pot. Once again, everyone gasped.

“You rob banks or something?” Marla inquired, her velvet antlers bobbing. “I think you're bluffing.”

Mike remained silent as he tried to remember what bluffing meant. Marla put another thousand bucks on the table, plus one dollar. After a few minutes of silence, Aram said, “You raising her, Mack? We don't have all day.”

Erase her? Mike shook his head no. Aram said, “Okay, let's see what you got.”

The table stared at his hand. Patty finally said, “You bet two grand on a stinkin' pair of jacks?”

That was apparently enough to beat Marla's pair of tens. “Take the money,” Pippa whispered in Mike's ear. “You won.”

Mike slowly acquired the drift of the game, although to Pippa's dismay he lost almost a thousand dollars in the process. Helen noticed that every time she swore at the Virgin Mary, Mike turned beet red then lost the round. Marla noticed that every time she coyly fingered her moose antlers, Mike turned beet red then lost the round. Patty noticed the same effect when she pulled at the loops on her shag top.

“Let's take ten,” Aram said after an hour. “I need a smoke.”

Pippa had a massive tension headache. Her diploma was still firmly ensconced in Marla's bra. She herded Mike into the limousine for a pep talk.

“I'm sorry, Miss Flushowitz,” he said. “I started out with a bang then got lost.”

“It's okay. I know you're trying.” Pippa was already online in the back seat reading up on poker strategy. “We have to make Marla lose all her money so she antes up the diploma. Then we have to win that. Do you know what a royal flush is?” She read from a list onscreen. “Ace, king, queen, jack, and ten all in the same suit. It's the best hand in poker. Do you know what a straight flush is?” No. “Five cards in order, all one suit. That's next best after a royal flush.” Pippa reviewed every possible combination as well as the rules of the game. Mike seemed to get everything but the concept of bluffing.

“That's like lying, isn't it? I'm not sure my priest would like that. Or my gambling.”

“Bluffing is like a quarterback feint in football. And it's not really gambling when you're playing with someone else's money. If you get a good hand, go for the jugular.”

“That's just below a full house, right?”

Pippa felt lightning behind her eyes. She should never have dragged the poor chauffeur into this shark tank. What would Thayne do in such a situation? Cheat, obviously. “I have an idea. If you hear me clear my throat, raise your bet.” Mike looked uncertain about the ethics of that. “If everybody else has a little mascot, you can have me.” Pippa gave him two thousand bucks. She only had twenty left in her purse. “I think Marla's a bluffer. So's Helen. Don't let them scare you when they raise the ante. Whenever Sal gets a good hand, he pulls his ear. When Aram gets a good hand, he bites his lip. When Patty gets a good hand, she plays with her shag loops.”

“You noticed all that?” Mike had enough on his mind just remembering if flushes were better than jugulars. They went inside. No one spoke. As he took his seat Mike glanced at Marla, who had just put on a pair of heart-shaped reading glasses. They looked quite menacing with the stuffed antlers.

Marla smiled. “I'm going to kill you now, Polack.”

Shivering, Mike watched Aram cut the deck. Oh, to be back in his limousine! He should have confessed right off the bat that he knew nothing about poker.
Polack!

Pippa gently squeezed his shoulder. “You can do it. Stay cool.”

Everyone put twenty in the pot. Mike was dealt a pair of nines. That seemed pretty good so when his turn came he bet a thousand dollars.

Marla peeled twelve hundred off a wad secreted in her bra next to the diploma. For an international poker champion, the chauffeur played quite inconsistently. Sometimes he bet big on low cards. Other times he bet small on high cards. He folded with medium cards. Was there a method to his madness or was he just an idiot? “Raise you two hundred, Polack.”

Sal, Aram, and Helen folded. Patty pushed twelve hundred and ten bucks into the pot. She and Marla each wanted two cards. Mike took three cards and got a third eight. The table waited in tense silence for him to make his move. “You in, Polack?” Aram finally asked.

That was three “Polacks” in the last two minutes! Exercising superhuman restraint, Mike put a thousand and twenty dollars in the pot. Marla didn't meet that, nor did Patty. Mike won with his triple eights.

Helen unleashed a torrent of obscenities at her Virgin Mary. “I've never seen someone win so much money with such bastard cards.”

“Polack,” Sal muttered. “Makes a souffle out of a friggin' pierogi.”

“They're trying to get you angry, Mike,” Pippa whispered as she noticed his ears redden. She couldn't lose him now: by some miracle he had won the last round. Marla was out of cash. Pippa could almost taste her diploma. “You're winning. Hang in there.”

“Looks like you're going to have to play that diploma, Bullwinkle,” Sal said.

Marla downed another plastic cup filled with scotch. She had temporarily lost possession of the two thousand bucks earmarked for her LASIK eye surgery. The Polack was cagier than she first thought, so she would need a major good-luck charm. Marla went to the coat closet, unearthed an old Navajo cape, and returned to the table.

“What is that rag?” Patty asked as Aram dealt. “I can smell the horse piss all the way over here.”

“Do you mind? I'm cold.” Marla extracted the squished diploma from her bra and tore off a corner. “That's twenty bucks.”

Pippa shot to her feet. “No fair!”

Everyone agreed. “Fine,” Marla sulked. “You lend me twenty to get into the game then.”

Pippa put her last twenty on the table. Helen, Sal, and Aram threw their last twenties into the pot as well. After looking at their cards, they uttered fireballs of profanity and folded.

Marla dropped the diploma on the table. “That's two thousand bucks.” She watched, mouth open, as Patty divested herself of fifteen hundred in cash, her Seiko watch, her aquamarine navel ring, and two earrings. “What do you call that trash pile?”

“Two thousand and fifty bucks. If you can bet a diploma, I can bet jewelry. Those diamond studs alone are worth three grand.”

“Those are cubic zirconia,” Pippa shouted.

“Shut up! You're not even in the game!”

After a black silence Marla cooed, “Sweeten the pot, honey.”

Patty flung a pair of tickets on top of the Seiko. “Skybox seats to the next Diamondbacks game. Your turn, Polack.”

Every cell in Pippa's body screamed at her to snatch the diploma off the table and run. This was the round Mike absolutely had to win. Summoning her last iota of courage, she peeped over Mike's shoulder and nearly collapsed: he had just gotten the worst deal of the day.
Nothing!
She cursed herself for having told him a signal to bet the farm, but not a signal to fold.
Fold! Fold, you idiot!
Pippa could feel the tension rise around the table as everyone waited for the Polish champion to reveal himself. She was acutely aware of warm scotch fumes, Patty's struggling deodorant, and an increasingly vile odor emanating from the Navajo cape. Pippa's nose began to itch. Was that thing made out of wool? She was allergic to wool.