Royal Flush

Sunday morning my sister hosted breakfast at her house, and most of the family showed up, except for the uncle and aunt from the midwest who had already started their drive back. My youngest sister Liza has a new puppy, and having heard that my mom actually liked him, I asked to witness this unusual phenomenon. My mom is a die-hard cat person, who puts up with dogs out of politeness but thinks they're obnoxious and disgusting. So I was amazed to see her pick up Smudge and cuddle him on her lap, then melt into a puddle of "awww" when he curled up and put his head on her knee.

As we were leaving, Liza said, "Hey B, don't take my puppy! I never thought I'd say those words!"

Kevin and I returned to my mom's long enough to unload the car and repack it, then said our goodbyes and headed off. With no particular need to be anywhere for the rest of the day, we headed for the new poker room that had opened up over the winter in the next town. It didn't open for another hour, so we wandered to a tattoo parlor two towns south, and then west into the city. We poked around in our favorite store, which is a strange combination of sex toy shop, stripper supply store, head shop, motorcycle accessory supplier, clothing store, weapons dealer, and even more things that I can't be bothered to list. He bought me a shiny red stripper outfit with the idea that I would wear it for him on his birthday...which I did, but of course it's also being added to my collection of stripper clothes, which I'm still considering using for their original purpose again.

Back in the car, I put in the new navel ring that he also bought me (I'm not a "buy me stuff" girl, I swear, he suggests it all), and then we went to get pizza. After lunch, we went back to the poker room, which had become startlingly busy, to the point where I had trouble finding parking. It turned out they had just started a freeroll, so we took table cards and sat down.

This was a new experience for me. I play a lot online, and I've played against Kevin and a couple of other friends with real chips, but I've never really played live, certainly not against people I don't know, with actual money in the picture. I did ok for my first time, although after a spectacular double-up (I had pocket sixes, she had pocket nines, and I flopped a set), I found myself card-dead and eventually got blinded out.

Kevin had been knocked out a while before, and when I went to find him, he was involved in a ten-dollar buy-in. So I went and bought myself in and grabbed a seat. I folded the first hand and raised with the second, the A-J of clubs. With three of us in the hand, the flop came Qc-Kc-blank. Check, bet, call, call. The turn was another blank. Check, bet, call, fold; heads-up with my monster draw. The river was the 10c. He bet enough to put me all in and I called instantly. When I flipped over the royal flush, the table erupted, and I broke my poker face in favor of a big grin.

"You're lucky she didn't have more chips!" said the guy on the left. "She woulda wiped you out!" I wished I had had more chips.

"What does she get for that?" asked someone else, and the dealer asked me, "You want a t-shirt?" When I gave her a strange look, she said, "I'm serious, royal flushes get t-shirts. You want one?"

"Sure!" I said, and the tournament director appeared two minutes later with a card room t-shirt.

"I've never made one of those," said the guy across the table, and several other people agreed.

"It was my first," I said, leaving out that that included all of my online play. I don't like to advertise that I'm an internet player, since people make assumptions about your image.

A few hands later our table broke, and I sat down at a short-handed table in the back. By the break, I was doing pretty well and had a good read on my table. One hand back from break, Kevin got knocked out again, and he came and hung out by my table to watch me play.

My table image was working well for me; I'd been folding a lot of hands, and when I did play, I was getting respect. I raised on the button with K-K and got a call from the big blind and another from the cutoff. The flop came Q-10-3, the big blind checked, and the cutoff made a small raise. Feeling my moment, I shoved.

The old guy in the big blind looked at me for a while, then said, "Set of Queens?" I didn't respond. "I'm going to make you rich, young lady," he said, and called. After some deliberation, the cutoff folded, and the big blind flipped over A-K. Happy to see that I was ahead, I waited for the rest of the cards. The turn was a blank, and I tried not to get excited about doubling up. The river was an Ace.

The entire table groaned in sympathy, and I shook the guy's hand, then stood up and headed for the rail.

At the first table we had played, it came up in conversation that there was another card room at a hotel in Wren's town, so we decided to go home that way and check it out. We arrived there at 5:30, saw there was a freeroll at 6:00, and sat down in the bar for some food. The food took twenty minutes, and after stuffing down a fish sandwich at record speed, I followed Kevin back to the poker room. We grabbed seat cards, but the table I was assigned was still full from another tournament. I asked the director if that table was part of the freeroll, and he said yes, then returned several minutes later and switched my card to another table. It turned out the freeroll didn't start until 6:30, so I sat at an empty table for a while and waited.

I chatted with the dealer when he showed up, and eventually the rest of the table filled up as well.

"Hey can I sit with you?" A college-aged guy seemed to pop out of thin air, and this question was directed at me from an uncomfortably close distance.

"What table are you at?" I asked, and was relieved to see that it was not mine. He introduced himself as Matty and I reluctantly gave him my name, then said I would see him at the final table and gave him knuckles. Just as I was retrieving my attention from the encounter, he showed up again with a new seat card.

"I traded," he said proudly, and sat down on my right. I was too polite to actually smack myself in the forehead, but I really wanted to.

"Hey," he said suddenly in my ear, and I jumped, then realized it was a different guy who was leaning in between our seats. "If my brother bothers you, just tell me and I'll get your boyfriend to kick his ass," the new guy said. "By the way, I'm Ira."

"I don't need him," I assured them. "I can beat the shit outta him all by myself."

"Awesome!" said Ira, who was clearly Matty's twin, and went back to his final table and his monster chip stack.

When the tournament eventually began, Matty spent the entire time stirring up the table and raising with shit. I doubled up once, but couldn't seem to get any real traction, and was struggling to keep my concentration with all the chaos. The dealer was annoyed too, especially after he actually had to tell the table to settle down and play poker. That's for high-school classrooms, not poker events. I was disgusted, but I couldn't say anything because everyone seemed to know this guy. When he had first walked away, the lady in seat one commented that he wouldn't be sitting here, and I said, "Thank goodness!" That earned me a glare, and after that I shut up, not wanting my ass handed to me by an in-bred group of yokels.

I bitched vociferously to Kevin on the break, and he told me to rebuy so I could get ahead. I said no, I would rather bust out just to be away from Matty. When we returned, my table broke and I got seated next to Kevin. Now I wanted to play, but when I got out money to rebuy, the dealer said I had missed it by fifty seconds. I doubled up once, then shoved again with Q-6 on a vain hope and got felted by pocket deuces.

Since Kevin was clearly going to be a while, I told him I was going to go find something to do elsewhere, because hanging out in a hot, stuffy, cramped room to watch him play was not how I wanted to spend the evening. He said his cell phone was dead and he would have no way to reach me, so I coudn't go anywhere. I went outside and called Wren and whined about my predicament, but she couldn't pick me up, because she was on her way to her mom's house and then to the house where she's staying for a month to pet-sit.

On a whim, I went to the car to check Kevin's phone. I found both of them, one with half charge and the other with full charge. Annoyed now, I marched back into the room and presented them to him, then marched back out again. I texted Wren to tell her I could leave after all, and ended up meeting her at her mom's house. I was talking with her mom in the kitchen when we heard a panicked voice from her room: "Oh my god I think he's dead!"

She had gone in there to collect her hamster to take with her, and when I went in to see if she was right, I found a very cold, stiff hamster. We took a few minutes to bury him out in the woods and say goodbye, then put her cat Bee in her carrier and headed out. We stopped at Wal-Mart to get mac 'n' cheese, then I followed her to her professor's apartment. It was hot as hell inside, and I ran around opening all the windows while she let out Bee and unpacked the few groceries she'd bought.

We found two copper pots and put them on the stove to boil water, then went into the next room and started unpacking the new window fan. Wren went back into the kitchen for something and I heard her say, "Uh, I think we're setting something on fire." I figured the burners were smoking off and she was overreacting, since she's somewhat fire-phobic, but I got up anyway to make her feel better.

I walked into the kitchen to see eight-inch flames shooting out of the stove.

"Oh my, I guess we are," I said, startled. Wren stood there frozen while I kicked into emergency mode. Looking around for a fire extinguisher, I didn't see one. I reached over the fire to turn on the hood fan so we wouldn't set off the smoke alarm, then peered under the pot to see what was going on.

"Ugh, no wonder," I said, seeing that the drip-pan was full of black goo.

"Is that gonna burn out?" asked Wren.

"Yeah, it should," I said, as the flames got higher. Deciding that the less we smoked the apartment the better, I grabbed the pot of hot water and poured it into the stove. The flames immediately went out, and I stood for a second in a mild state of shock. Then I felt something warm touch my feet, and when I looked down, hot brown water was pouring across the floor from the stove. "Ew." I backed up and wiped my toes on my jeans while Wren got a towel.

We came to the uneasy conclusion that there was only one smoke detector in the apartment, and it would never detect a kitchen fire until it was way too late for any occupants. Wren had the brilliant idea for us to drop off my car back at the hotel so I wouldn't have to pick up Kevin, so we shut everything off and left. I left the car and went inside to give him the keys. He had been texting me periodic updates, so I knew he was at the final table with a monster chip lead, but he felt the need to tell me again, since he hadn't bothered to check his phone for a reply.

Wren and I returned to the apartment and I showed her how to take apart the burners and clean out the drip trays. Then we made mac 'n' cheese with no mishaps, and while I was eating, I got to meet the resident kitten.

A while later, Kevin texted me "2nd place 450" and I gave him directions to find us. He showed up a few minutes later, waving $450 in cash. I congratulated him, then spent the next half hour sitting on the floor while he talked, wishing he would shut the hell up.