The pockets came down like a heavy rain when your face is caked with tears: no one can see it but you know what’s really going on. Big Head was big blind and Ryan was small. Gonzo was to the left with a shortest stack, looking casual in polarized Oakley’s. J was shuffling his chips like a deck trying to shuffle the tits off the queens. I tried to remain steely, but I could feel my eyes resisting the urge to scan around the table. I peeled back my cards and spied an unsuited Big Slick, the ace of diamonds and the suicide king looking back at me. Gonzo didn’t flinch when he checked his pocket, stone-faced bastard. J folded in disgust and mumbled something about a hand that looked like an orphanage fire. BH didn’t even look at his cards and tossed a couple of red chips into the pot. Ryan’s mouth subtly twitched as a sigh escaped him. He was tap-dancing on a high wire and it seemed that the next round of bets were going to tell all of us if that wire was going to have thousands of volts shot through it. Ryan hand slowly put in two more reds begrudgingly like someone was holding a gun to it. I checked, like a smartest man in the room. The dealer panned the table, eyes sharp with attention but with a smoldering apathy behind that. She didn’t care who won and who lost; the same look a military leader would have the frontlines of a battle. Life and death be damned if it didn’t effect them personally. She burned and turned before spreading out the flop. Three of hearts, ten of hearts, and the queen of diamonds. My heartbeat leapt from calm to struggling against a straightjacket. A shiny sheet of sweat broke out on Ryan’s forehead. It seemed he had tripped off the wire, racked himself, and the several car batteries worth of juice were going straight to his balls. I tossed in two reds and a blue, feeding the pot like so much chum in a shark tank. A shark tank full of sharks with bloodlust and chainsaws for fins. Big Head cleared his throat and finally looked at his cards. The fucker seemed to be using the Force and that made everyone itchy. A grin split his face and raised the pot by another two blues. Without saying anything, Ryan folded. No one said anything but the chuckles that spread across the table spoke volumes about the pot being too intimidating a bleak abyss for Ryan to stare into and remain solvent and sane. Gonzo adjusted his sunglasses, pulled a hit from his vape, and called the bet. I checked, suddenly not liking my odds. The dealer burns another card from the top of the deck facedown and places another one face up. The Turn gave me a glimmer of hope, but in inches not miles. It was the four of clubs. Big Head’s unwavering faith in the unknown guiding his luck looked like it diminished as his cocky smile eroded slightly to a half-hearted smirk and raised eyebrows. He tossed in the new minimum, two more blues, and readjusted himself in his chair. I don’t know what he had, but if he wasn’t feeling the pins and needles now, he would be soon. Gonzo tilted his head up and looking over at BH from behind his mirrored lenses. Big Head’s smile regained his sparking quality while filling my heart with loathing. Gonzo’s fingers trembled in the air above the green felt. He was debating checking and we could all tell. His hand was moving like a belly dancer with Parkinson’s when he finally decided. Calling his decision to raise bravely stupid was a compliment to stupid and insult to bravery. He went all in. He slid his chip pile into the center of the table then leaned back in his chair. The chair creaked menacingly, like it held a Bond villain who had the spy in a truly inescapable death trap and readily prepared to launch his doomsday weapon. The self-assured fucker had put both Big Head and I in a position to put up or shut up. Ryan and J looked at the table and then to each other and then around the table. The dealer managed to side-glance at her watch. Her shift must be up soon or she was ready for a cigarette break. I counted my chips out and cut a squinty glare at Big Head. He caught me and his smile got that much toothier. Shit. Fine. I’d bought the ticket so I might as well take the ride. It was either going be the Disney teacups or a Gemini-Titan rocket to Hell. I placed two thirds of my money in to cold call Gonzo. With that, Gonzo sat up in his seat like he was suddenly realized a hungry T-Rex was behind him. BH checked, rapping his knuckles on the table unceremoniously. The three of us flipped our pockets face up, surrounding the hefty pot. Gonzo had two pairs: 10’s and 3’s. Big Head had pocket 6’s and didn’t seem enthused to show them. He had been floating his bets when there were wolves in the henhouse. If those chickens were capable of flight, they would be coming home to roost. No matter how he cut it, he thought he was doomed. I flashed my Slick. Gonzo and BH laughed. I was an atheist quarterback looking for a Hail Mary with two seconds on the clock. This was a showdown and I had brought a water pistol to a Patriot missile fight…and the betting could still go on. The clock ticked languidly and marked every God damned moment Big Head took to think, to calculate his odds. Gonzo took another hit on the vape, exhaling a thick plume of dope-tinged smoke. The man was sitting on two pair and hungrily looking to put down the two upstart would-be wolf pack leaders, one with a grim likelihood at a losing three of a kind, and the other with an even grimmer shot at pulling a winning straight. Big Head let out a haunting rendition of Omar’s whistle from The Wire and called my bet. Gonzo readjusted his glasses from where they had partially slid down his nose as a result of his own sweat betraying his coolness. I checked. There was nothing else I could do if I wanted to get out of this wood chipper of hand with any skin left on me. Gonzo leaned back again, crossing his arms on his chest. Big Head just stared through the dealer, trying to remain casual. His bluff was going to cost him a good–sized chunk of moolah and his faith in whatever celestial being had deserted him. Big Head knew if he made it to the next hand, he would be barely be skating by the rest of the table on chips since he had played Gonzo and I off each other. I was trying not to burn a hole through my exposed cards, a possible barbed wire handled bucket of shit if I didn’t catch up and on the inside. The dealer burning and turning the River felt like it was a slow-motion David Lynch movie. Everything was jagged, out of focus, jittery and strobing. It took relative eons for her to greet the felt with the card. All that ran through my mind was Stars Wars. If I was Han Solo, I would have asked to never tell me the odds, and then some homosexual gold-plated asshole would tell me I have less than a 10 percent chance to pull a jack. One in ten. Three times the chances of getting laid before the night’s over in a relationship and about the same chance an email is pornography. She sets down the River like a flower on a grave. Big Head groans and Gonzo just stares at it like he caught it fucking his sister on Prom night. Whatever flying spaghetti monster or disembodied sentient gas cloud that runs the cosmos that Big Head was praying to must hate attention mongers and love to see if it can convert a non-believer. Looking up from a fuzzy sea of dull lime green is the jack of spades. My inside Straight. Gonzo gets up to get another beer and I give a nod that asks if he’ll comeback with one for me. The blind counter gets swept over to Ryan as I nonchalantly sweep the chips off the table and organize them in stacks. J checks his phone and the dealer stretches and tells us she’ll be right back. I follow her, knowing we’re both going to return to the table reeking of Camel filters.