The tutter tutted, then checked, but the leg-shaker threw in his bet, staring straight at Tom as he did so. Tom ignored him and raised. The tutter grumbled and matched Tom, and the leg-shaker glared angrily at Tom before re-raising. Tom grinned inside at the man’s pointless anger and raised again.
The tutter tutted loudly. Then get the hell out, thought Tom, and after a few moments of lip-biting and chip-counting, she spun her cards back to the dealer.
Tom could feel the animosity of the leg-shaker coming at him in waves as he called Tom’s bet.
It was all on this last card. If it was the eight or any club, Tom was probably home free. Anything else was a disaster.
The painfully thin Chinese girl dealer with translucent skin flipped over the five of diamonds. Tom didn’t have the straight or the flush or anything else. His heart banged in his chest. The dealer directed a tiny finger at the leg-shaker, indicating it was his bet.
Tom’s forearms had rested on the fake-leather padding around the edge of the table throughout. It was through this that he’d felt the small vibrations of the leg-shaker ever since he’d sat down two hours before. Now his forearms told him that – just for a second – the man had stopped shaking his leg. He started again almost instantly, but it was a clue that Tom seized on. Something had made him stop. The cessation of leg-shaking indicated that he’d had to think for a moment, and thinking was all about reassessment. And reassessment meant compromises and a lowering of expectations.
It was a small chink of hope but Tom went with it and decided to go with the bluff: make the guy think he had a pocket pair that matched one of the lower cards on the table, and was therefore sure to beat trip queens with a full house. When the leg-shaker pushed his bet into the centre of the table, Tom shoved in the rest of his chips. The man looked uncertainly at his cards again and Tom knew he had him.
With the pot at more than fourteen hundred dollars, and a small knot of people forming to watch the action, the leg-shaker lost confidence, stood up and folded, angrily flicking his cards at the dealer. As the last man folded, he turned his cards face up. Pocket tens!
Tom met the man’s eyes and grinned. He couldn’t help it. He knew he’d bluffed well, but bluffing three-of-a-kind clear out of the game was an almost sexual thrill.
‘Get your fucking hands out the way!’
The dealer ignored the pockmarked man – used to the abuse of losers.
‘Waving your hands about, you fucking amateur.’
‘It’s over. Leave her alone,’ said Tom, casually, without looking at him.
‘Fuck you. Let’s see what you got.’ The leg-shaker stared at him with angry eyes.
Tom never showed his cards unless someone paid to see them. He peered at the pot innocently. ‘I got about fourteen hundred dollars.’
People round the table chuckled.
‘You gonna show me, dick?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’ll show you dick.’ He pushed his cards carefully back at the dealer. She quickly absorbed them into the pack, hoping to dissipate any trouble once the evidence was gone for ever.
‘Fuck!’
Tom said nothing, just started stacking the chips into neat piles in the little plastic trays the club provided. A thousand dollars per tray for the ten-dollar chips. He needed more trays and looked around for a chip jockey.
From the corner of his eye he saw the leg-shaker coming at him and managed to get an arm part-way up in front of his face. The deflected blow still spun his head round and knocked him off the chair. The man was on him in an instant, almost under the neighbouring table, dropping his knee into Tom’s groin as he pounded his fists onto his face.
It was over quickly, but not quickly enough. Security guards pulled the man off him and Tom curled up tight on his side, not even feeling his face as the pain in his balls swept over him and he threw up onto the garish carpet beside his head.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, but resisted the attempt to roll him onto his back. He needed to be in this position for a while yet. Maybe for ever.
He was dimly aware of people’s feet moving around him as he breathed hard into the carpet, which smelt of vomit over shoe-dirt. Two pairs of shiny black military-style boots were scuffing and bracing either side of an incongruous pair of red cowboy boots, which Tom registered must belong to the leg-shaker.
Stupid red boots.
Another wave of nausea hit him and he spewed again. This time the hands didn’t try to turn him over, just pulled him a little away from the puddles of vomit. Tom was pathetically grateful that he wasn’t lying in his own puke.
Slowly, slowly, the agony between his legs subsided and he started to breathe again. At the same time his face and head started vying for attention from his central nervous system. His face pulsed with pain, and he tasted blood in his mouth.
This time when the hands touched his shoulder, he allowed them to help him to sit up. Someone handed him a bar towel with Bud Lite on it, and he spat blood and flecks of vomit into it, then wiped his mouth. He winced as he scraped across his torn lip. Blood dripped into his eyes and nose and trickled down his throat. Fuck – what a mess.
He remembered his chips and looked up to see the dealer holding his trays for him. She met his eyes reassuringly.
Then he looked round to see who’d given him the towel and met the dark grey eyes of the Pinball Kid’s erstwhile blonde.
‘Okay?’ she said.
Before he could answer, a boy of about twelve dressed as a medic hunkered down in front of him and shone a torch into his eyes, making Tom feel old as well as beat-up.
‘How many fingers?’
‘Three.’
‘Good. You think you can stand up?’
‘Not straight.’
The kid grinned at him. ‘Take one in the nuts?’
Tom nodded weakly and the medic stood up. ‘Get the ice bag, Lis!’
By the time Lis appeared with the ice bag, Tom was resting his forehead on the table where he’d been playing, although the Honolulu staff were hovering nervously with towels in case he threw up on the baize and put the table out of action all night.
The medic put butterfly plasters on the cut over his eye and dabbed stinging disinfectant into his other cuts and scrapes. Tom felt like a five-year-old who’d come off his bike. He sure smelt like one.
