2 Pushing Luck Read Online Free PDF Page A

just thought I’d take an actual chance,” I taunted. “Instead of just talking about it. That’s why it’s called gambling.”
    The rakshasa made a low, wet snorting sound. “I think you’re holding three of a kind and trying to act like a suicide bomber. I call.”
    Again, was it cheating, or was it that good at reading me?
    The fish smirked and pushed three hundred and forty thousand dollars of his not-earned money forward. “So do I.”
    Jamie folded.
    I turned my cards over. I had pulled the five of clubs. Four of a kind.
    The rakshasa stared at my hand for a long moment. Something in its eyes ignited, a deep smoldering rage that wanted to burn the world down. It threw its cards in without any urbane chatter.
    Well, at least I knew I wasn’t facing a cold deck. The fish made a big deal out of having three kings. Jamie didn’t comment one way or another.
    On the next hand, I had four hearts with a six and a nine showing. I drew one card, again keeping it facedown without looking at it.
    “Does Mark always play this eccentrically?” the rakshasa asked Jamie.
    She shrugged.
    Three raises after opening on a pair of jacks, the fish went all in.
    We all knew the fish was bluffing. He had an odd, resigned calm when he was bluffing and simmered slightly when he wasn’t.
    Jamie folded.
    I called. If I won, the fish was out of the game.
    “You still haven’t looked at your card,” the rakshasa remarked. It didn’t quite manage to sound neutral. It sounded the way someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder might sound while casually mentioning that your socks didn’t match.
    “I’m not betting on my cards,” I said.
    “What are you betting on?” it asked politely. It wanted to remove my eyeballs and put them on toothpicks and eat them.
    I smiled. “I’m betting against you. I think your luck has run out.”
    The rakshasa used its buy-in and called. I had found its button. It could not abide my hint of anything resembling order or greater purpose in the universe.
    The fish sheepishly unveiled…a pair of jacks.
    I turned my cards over: a six, a seven, an eight, a nine, and a ten of hearts. A straight flush. The watchers went crazy.
    I have no explanation for it. I am not an overtly religious man, but I do believe there is something in the universe more than chaos and selfishness. Of course, a lot of people who have that feeling while gambling wind up in rehab. You can believe what you want.
    The rakshasa was absolutely still. It stared at the cards, then looked at me with those murky eyes. When It got up and left the table, it did so without saying a word.
    It was so agitated that it forgot to wheel Russell away with it. I addressed Russell while I was leaning forward to rake in the chips. “I’ve been wanting to say something to you, Russell. This thing inside you that’s eating you alive? I don’t know how much you have left in you, but you need to fight it. Fight it with everything you have. Because it can be beaten.”
    “You have some experience with cancer?” These were the first substantive words Jamie had spoken to me since the game started. It was just her and me now.
    I didn’t take my eyes off Russell. “I know what it is to feel like something is taking your life over inside and out. It’s not enough to just not want to die. We all die. The only thing worth fighting for is being who we really are.”
    Any brief sense of oneness with the universe or destiny had left me. In fact, I couldn’t seem to draw a good hand from that point on. With a considerably lesser stake, Jamie proceeded to annihilate me. I didn’t care. The rakshasa was somewhere doing something and it had been right when it said that the money really wasn’t the most important thing to me.
    I didn’t use my buy-in.
    *  *  *
    “I’m sorry,” Jamie said later.
    “You’ve never been sorry for winning in your life,” I said.
    We were in a small parlor lined with portraits of Russell Sidney’s ancestors. I was