House of Cards

When Martin Oakes got the word that Smooth Jake Warner had finally agreed to play poker, he tried to sleep, but he couldn't, so he got into the car and drove all night to Virginia.

Smooth Jake was a legend. Ace Roldan, one of the men Martin Oakes had beaten, called Smooth Jake "the meanest, roughest, hardest-bitten card-playing snake east of Vegas," and Roldan had seen enough gambling pits to be reliable about identifying the reptiles that managed to crawl out of them.

Smooth Jake's face and hands were as red and dry as Arizona clay, and it was said about him that he could work his eyelids like Venetian blinds. Some even went so far as to say that his concentration made it possible for him to see his opponent's cards. It wasn't clear whether he accomplished this by looking through the backs of the cards or by actually peering into the opponent's mind, but the result was the same.

Smooth Jake lived in Middleburg on an estate called The Little Boltons that was anything but; the front door was exactly 1.4 miles from the front gate. He employed a full-time staff of 13. The youngest employee (continued on page 118)HouseofCards(continued from page 92) did nothing but cut grass.

Martin Oakes pulled into Middleburg before dawn and slept for three hours next to the Washington Post box at the end of Smooth Jake's driveway.

An enormous lawn mower appeared in the distance, chewing up grass and spitting its smell into the humid air. Martin Oakes lighted a cigarette. The Blue Ridge Mountains really did look blue. Mosquitoes hovered aimlessly around Martin Oakes's car. He swatted three of them flat on his arm before they got around to biting him. He had $15,000 in a duffel bag in the trunk of the car.

At nine sharp, shirt wrinkled, hair combed, face dry-shaved, he steered his Torino up the path to the main house. Martin Oakes held the engine to Smooth Jake's ten-mile-per-hour speed limit. Half a mile up the path, the fourth floor of the house peeked out over the steep pitch of the lawn, then the third.

The house got wider as it got lower. Outside, there was a satellite dish; Smooth Jake monitored his stock quotes and sports bets in real time. Inside, according to what Martin Oakes had read, there were 33 rooms, five baths, two kitchens, a 70' x 25' dining hall, two elevators, a sauna, a library and a greenhouse. None of this particularly impressed Martin Oakes. What impressed him were the Doric columns that dominated the front of the house and proved that Middleburg was a place to play poker, after all. There were six of them, in alternating latex colors: two white, two red and two blue. Six giant stacks of poker chips. Architecturally speaking, Scarlett O'Hara had moved in with Jimmy the Greek. Martin Oakes was so transfixed by the columns that he nearly flattened the birdbath at the bottom of Smooth Jake's oval driveway. When he pulled to a stop, he counted the horizontal lines across one of the columns. There were 25 chips in each stack. The kid on the lawn mower waved. There was grass to cut in every direction for as far as the eye could see. By the time the kid cut it all, it would be time for him to start cutting it again.

A woman came out of the house. She looked as if she worked on her exits as hard as she worked on her entrances and was always doing one or the other, Martin Oakes wasn't certain which now. Once she descended the stairs from the porch, she turned and made her way toward him. With ten feet to go, she held out her hand and said, "Mr. Oakes? I'm Meghan Warner. Welcome to The Little Boltons." She said it as if he had won the trip. She had the height and grace of a model, but there was a vibrancy in her thick auburn hair and a focus in her eyes that Martin Oakes guessed couldn't be captured on film. "Jake's a little busy just now," she said, her voice projecting out across the lawn. "He asked me to come and meet you."

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Warner." She was an extremely attractive woman, but he couldn't stop staring at the columns.

"Like them?" she asked.

"Well," he said, "I've never seen anything like them."

She laughed and ran her hand through the air; if the columns were strings, she might have been strumming a chord. "Yes.Well. They've given half the town heart attacks."

"I can imagine."

Meghan Warner gestured toward the house. "Won't you come inside and have a drink?"

"If it's coffee," he said.

"It can be anything you want it to be," she said. "You take it black, don't you?" He nodded. "Like Jake," she said. She was either perceptive or well informed.

They went inside and she steered him through a side door in the kitchen and out onto a patio overlooking the pool. A brass frog spit water into the shallow end. The surface of the pool rippled with liquid clouds and the odd band of sunlight. The patio was shielded from the sky by a hydraulic tent top. Smooth Jake sat facing the pool with his back to his wife and Martin Oakes. He was wearing a pink polo shirt and Bermuda shorts and was rubbing some sort of lotion into his bare feet. His feet were propped on a glass table crowded with empty orange-juice glasses, a silver coffee pot and plates smeared with egg yolks, syrup and uneaten scraps of French toast. As they approached him, he turned and faced his wife. She introduced Martin Oakes with a sweep of her hand.

"Martin Oakes," she said, "Jake Warner."

"Well," Smooth Jake said, "I'm damned if the man doesn't look like a poker player."

Smooth Jake held out his hand. He was 63 years old, and Martin Oakes knew he'd been gambling seriously for 50 of them. He had black hair and a wide forehead, thin slats for eyes and a brow ridged with uneven deposits of cartilage. It was clear to Martin Oakes that the cartilage had built up beneath an accumulation of blows. What struck him as curious was that Smooth Jake's craggy brow somehow harmonized the rest of his face; experience had beaten him like a drum, but he seemed to have weathered the blows and come out the winner. His smile was wide, but his lips were thin; the corners of his mouth seemed to jut out directly from his cheekbones. The skin on his neck and arms and hands was as dry and snug as scales on a desert dweller.

"It's an honor to meet you, sir," Martin Oakes said, shaking Jake's grizzled hand.

"You know, it really wasn't necessary for you to sleep at the end of the driveway," Smooth Jake said. "We've got a spare room or two up here at the house."

No amount of moisturizer would saturate that skin, thought Martin Oakes. He might as well rub sweat into the Sahara.

"I pulled in late."

"Mr. Oakes, what's late for most people is morning for you and me."

Meghan Warner said, "If you don't mind, I think I'll show our guest to his room."

"I was hoping you would," Smooth Jake said, rubbing cream into his toes.

They climbed two flights of stairs and walked down a narrow hallway. She stopped and opened the door to a room with a huge four-poster bed, ornate lamps, a chest of drawers, a raised bath-tub on cast-iron eagle's claws, a matching cast-iron sink and an antique desk and chair.

"This is where we put all of Jake's guests," Meghan Warner said pleasantly. "I do hope you enjoy your stay." She pointed out soap, towels and a small refrigerator and bar above the sink. The chest of drawers gave off a scent of lemon-verbena sachet. "If there's anything you need, just let us know."

"Has your husband mentioned when he wants to start our game?"

"How could he?" she asked, in the doorway now, braced for one of her exits. "He's not even sure if you'll play yet."

•

Martin Oakes took a bath and a nap. During the nap, he dreamed about lemon trees. When he woke up, he considered unpacking his clothes in the chest of drawers, knowing that if he did, he would have to wear the lemon scent for as long as he stayed at The Little Boltons. He decided he would dress out of his bag. He went out into the hallway and traced his steps back to the phone he had seen on the staircase landing. He picked up the phone.

"Yes, hello," a voice said brightly on the other end of the line before he could dial. "What'll it be?"

"I could use something to eat," Martin (continued on page 126)HouseofCards(continued from page 118) Oakes said.

"See what we can do," the voice said, and rang off before he could ask the time.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock at his door. "Come on in," said Martin Oakes.

Smooth Jake opened the door and entered the room holding a tray. He was dressed in tennis whites, and his sneakers were streaked with clay dust. The dust matched the color of his skin. The tray held two bottles of Mexican beer, a pair of cut-glass tumblers and a plate with steak, baked potato and creamed peas. Martin Oakes let the steak's smell take hold of his stomach. "Go ahead," Smooth Jake said, "dig in." Martin Oakes pulled the tray over to the bed and started eating.

Smooth Jake shook his head. "I ran a credit check on you. As far as I can tell, you're free of debt."

"I brought the fifteen thousand."

"Good. I'll send someone around to get it, put it in the safe." Smooth Jake picked up the second bottle of beer from the tray and opened it.

Martin Oakes could hear the steady hum of the lawn mower in the distance. He chewed a mouthful of steak. "Why did you finally agree to play me, Mr. Warner?"

"Your name's been getting around."

"I've been trying to get a game with you for four years."

"Everyone has to pay their dues. You're no different." Smooth Jake sat down in the chair and propped his feet up on the desk. Some of the dust from his sneakers settled on the desk's blotter. Smooth Jake let the blinds down on his eyes. Martin Oakes wasn't sure if he was keeping light out or in. "You may have heard," Smooth Jake said, "that I no longer play for money."

"I've heard it. Since you told me to bring fifteen thousand dollars, I didn't believe."

"That's your incentive."

"What's yours?"

Smooth Jake let a hissing laugh escape from his inscrutable mouth. "When you reach the point I've reached, it's no longer so much a matter of what you stand to gain as what your opponent stands to lose."

"If you have some other stake in mind, why don't you state it explicitly?"

"I match your fifteen thousand. We play until one of us has the whole thirty. If I win, you stop playing poker."

"For how long?"

"Permanently."

Martin Oakes could feel the color start in his cheeks and concentrated on controlling his breathing. The beer didn't help. "I don't understand. Even if I said I would stop, what's to keep me from playing?"

"Your honor."

"I never said I was honorable."

Smooth Jake walked to the door. "You're welcome to stay for dinner."

"I make my living playing poker."

"In my opinion, Mr. Oakes," Smooth Jake said, "nothing could be nobler. I'm afraid, however, I didn't make myself clear."

"I don't see how."

"Because," Smooth Jake said, "if I lose, I'm going to stop playing, too."

•

Martin Oakes swam a mile in the pool. When he finished the mile, he floated on his back, listening to the water slap against the pool gutters and watching the dusk spring out over the hills in the near distance. Twilight in summertime Virginia could be as benign as the humid afternoons were oppressive.

"I'm afraid we've been ignoring you," Meghan Warner said, appearing at the pool's edge. Martin Oakes hadn't heard her approach and didn't know from which direction she had come.

"I don't mind being alone," Martin Oakes said.

"If you say so," she said, looking back toward the house. "Jake wasn't sure if you would be staying for dinner."

"I guess it depends on what's for dinner."

She had on a light-blue dress and high heels. There was no wind, but she gathered the dress discreetly at her knees before climbing the three-step ladder to the diving board. "We will begin with cream-of-asparagus-and-morel soup." She began pacing back and forth on the diving board. "Then on to tonight's main course: baked redfish en papillote. Martha's Creole sauce is first rate." Her heels were at least three inches high. Martin Oakes hoped she wouldn't fall into the pool. She strode purposefully to the end of the diving board and began bouncing, still holding her dress with one hand. "Are you sure you want to be doing that?" he asked.

"This day has had a very high degree of difficulty," she said, landing neatly on the balls of her feet after each jump.Her arms moved in time to her jumping. Her hand movements were balletic. "Think you can beat Jake?"

"I've been waiting four years to try."

"Well," she said, "at least stay for dinner." Without warning, she turned 180 degrees in the air, but instead of diving backward into the pool, she struck the board at an angle that sprang her back toward the ladder. Letting go of her dress, she caught the aluminum tubing on either side of it and climbed down. There was still no wind, but she had been holding on for so long that letting go seemed a bit immodest. "Are you going to play?" she asked.

"I haven't made up my mind yet." He floated on his back from one end of the pool to the other. She strolled along the side, billowing hair blending nicely with the purple sky. "Tell me," he said, "have you ever been in a beauty pageant?"

"I went from beauty pageants to soap operas to game shows," she said, looking up at the stars. "To Jake," she concluded. Martin Oakes went underwater again.

"Win any of the pageants?" he asked after he had surfaced.

"I was runner-up for Miss Butler County," she said. "I lost out to a girl who parallel-parked for the talent competition." Now it was his turn to look skeptical. "They held the pageant outdoors," she said. "It was part of that year's county fair. When they got through judging the steers, the Four-H riders, the pigs, the chili and the cheesecake, they judged the girls. The girl who won--I'll never forget her name: Mirna Dodge; have you ever heard of a beauty queen named Mirna Dodge?--old Mirna, who's probably toothless knitting a sweater someplace now and balancing a beer mug on her belly, drove a Fifty-six T-hird convertible. Drove it right onto the stage."

"Why are you telling me about one you lost?" he asked.

"Because that's the one I remember." She peered into the inky water. "First they wheeled the T-bird onto the stage. Mirna had popcorn-blonde hair and a very pronounced chest and a thick red sash strangling her waist and, of course, about two jars of petroleum jelly in her mouth so the judges could see the sun bounce off her teeth as she backed up. It was like a magic act. One guy drove in from the left in a Packard. Another drove in from the right in a Buick Wild-cat. For a moment, everyone thought the two cars were going to collide, but then they both stopped, leaving just enough room for the T-bird to squeeze in between. I was sure the stage was going to collapse under the weight of all those cars. The crowd was howling. Needless to say, I was suspicious about parallel parking being considered a talent, but the way Mirna breezed into that (continued on page 153)HouseofCards(continued from page 126) tiny space, smiling like all joy to the world, well, she changed my mind. She zipped in and out four times without a hitch, and the judges could hardly wait to pin the crown on her head."

From the angle Martin Oakes was looking at Meghan Warner, the stars above her head formed a much more imposing crown.

•

At dinner, Meghan Warner picked at her redfish but took an active interest in the wine. The candles she had lighted left much of the huge dining room in darkness. The three of them sat at one end of the main table, Smooth Jake at its head, his wife and his guest on either side of him. Revolutionary War paintings decorated the walls. In one of the paintings, a regiment of English soldiers stacked its weapons in a pile while an equal number of triumphant but ill-clad Americans watched. The Americans all had enormous chests, the result, Martin Oakes thought, of holding their breath. The redcoats' weapons could have been poker chips.

"Do you realize," Meghan Warner said while uncorking a third bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, "that we are all in bare feet?"

"In bare feet?" Smooth Jake repeated, holding out his glass, scratching one of his feet with the other. "That's an interesting way of looking at it, Meg."

Smooth Jake wiped his mouth, a straight line with hidden corners. He turned to Martin Oakes. "Have you made your decision?"

Martin Oakes got up from the table. "I noticed that the paint on the columns out front is peeling," he said. "Especially the red."

"It's the humidity," Smooth Jake said. "Will you be going or staying, Martin?"

"Oh," Martin Oakes said, "I don't see how I can walk away from the perfect bet."

•

They walked side by side down the narrow hallway to the sparse, windowless room. An invisible servant had put two pitchers of ice water on the table. Already switched on, the track lights hung low over the table, catching the swirling ice at different angles. Martin Oakes watched the unpredictable patterns of light circle slowly round the tabletop. The fingers on Smooth Jake's dealing hand flexed slowly. Martin Oakes was aware of Smooth Jake's reputation as an unrivaled card mechanic, but he wasn't worried about which cards Smooth Jake would deal him. Smooth Jake would play it square. If the cards themselves were transparent to his probing mind, well, that could hardly be called cheating. The walls stretched just seven feet from floor to ceiling; a pale band of wainscoting seemed to divide the room in half. Air rose from an iron grate under the table, but the ceiling's proximity gave the room the cramped feeling of a cell.

Martin Oakes stood across the table from Smooth Jake, waiting for a signal to sit down. He noted with gratitude that their simple, straight-backed chairs were identical.

"Please sit down," Smooth Jake said.

A soft, turning feeling crept into Martin Oakes's stomach; a tiny ball of fear, nervous and darting. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather just play for the money?" he asked.

"The money is insignificant," Smooth Jake replied. "One of us must be eliminated for it to be the perfect bet." They settled into their chairs. "I'm happy to wait for a few minutes if you would like the time to recover your breath." When Martin Oakes shook his head, Smooth Jake snapped the seal on a package of cards and offered his opponent the deck for inspection. "Playing for the right to play again," he said cordially. "I can't think of a purer motive, can you, Martin?"

Smooth Jake cut the high card and they began. The games were dealer's choice. "These days, the sharps insist on seven stud and seven hold 'em," Smooth Jake complained, "but a good player should be able to win any fair game. I know too many professional gamblers who have forgotten how to play a simple hand of five-card draw. Let's see if you remember. Jacks or better." He began dealing. "Openers?" Martin Oakes shook his head. Smooth Jake pushed $50 into the middle of the table. Martin Oakes pushed a raise into the pot. He felt sharp.

"Call," Smooth Jake said.

"Tens and fours."

"Three sevens."

Martin Oakes held out the second deck. "Cut?"

They played well into the night. Smooth Jake barely paid attention to his cards, but by two o'clock, he was already up $850. Martin Oakes spoke only when it was his turn to bet or call the next game. Sharp as he felt, the game refused to come into focus for him. Smooth Jake's hands were as difficult to judge as the ice shadows on the surface of the table. What did he have? How many cards had he drawn? Smoehow, Smooth Jake managed to blur the betting intervals to the point where Martin Oakes didn't know who was following and who was leading. There was an almost hospitable pattern to the way Smooth Jake played--"This is where we put all of Jake's guests"--but as buoyant as Martin Oakes felt about the evening in general, he couldn't help noticing that the individual games were continuing to slip away from him. At three o'clock, Smooth Jake spread a jack-high straight on the table, gathered in the pot and said benignly, "If you don't mind, I'd like to retire for the evening after a few more hands."

"Certainly," Martin Oakes said. He estimated he was down about $1300 and he wasn't sure why, or how, he'd lost it. He had studied Smooth Jake intently for more than five hours without gaining a glimmer into his true strategy. From the way Smooth Jake peered back with his Venetian-blind eyes, however, Martin Oakes worried that he was showing something. But he couldn't stop showing it until he could figure out what it was. Perhaps he was just thinking too loud.

Smooth Jake dealt out the last hand of the evening. "Seven-card draw. Twos and threes wild."

"Twos and threes wild?" Martin Oakes repeated, incredulous.

"You heard me." They bet and drew and bet again. "Five kings," Smooth Jake announced.

"You mean two kings, two threes, and a two."

"Wild's wild."

"I'll say." Martin Oakes slipped his cards back into the deck without divulging that he had four sevens by virtue of the other pair of threes. "You call that poker?"

"No," Smooth Jake said, stacking his chips. "I call it about three hundred dollars." He got up from the table. "Good night, Martin. Better luck tomorrow."

"No more wild cards."

"Agreed."

•

The second night, Martin Oakes won back $500 after a grueling but inconclusive seven-hour session in which Smooth Jake frequently looked ready to fall asleep. "You have a lot to learn," Smooth Jake said after the game, yawning before he climbed the stairs to his room. "There may be time. But I'm not optimistic."

•

They stayed even for another day until Smooth Jake rode a streak of good cards and better judgment to pull ahead by $5000. Smooth Jake anticipated all of Martin Oakes's good hands. He invariably called Martin Oakes's bluffs. And since Smooth Jake never dealt the same game twice in a row, Martin Oakes could detect no rhythm in his thinking, no cadence in his betting. Smooth Jake sat straight and still in his chair while Martin Oakes mentally reeled in his, off balance and uncertain, hearing the grate beneath the table whisper his cards, perhaps his thoughts, into Smooth Jake's ear. Martin Oakes was not a superstitious man, but as the pressure continued to bunch up between his shoulder blades and the creaks in the floor boards made it increasingly difficult for him to concentrate, he struggled to the conclusion that he wasn't playing just Smooth Jake; he was playing the house and the lawn and the legend, too.

Smooth Jake slid $150 into the pot after dealing the last card in a game of seven stud. Martin Oakes hesitated for a moment, then said, "Fold."

Smooth Jake allowed himself a sigh as he slipped his three down cards back into the deck. "I'm going to tell you something," he said, breaking the unwritten rule that poker players should never offer advice or criticism to each other during a session. "Never hesitate to pay a fair amount of money to find out how your opponent thinks. When you think you stand to gain an important insight, put in whatever it takes to call him. That investment will return to you ten times over, provided you know how to analyze what you're about to see." Smooth Jake raised his glass to his lips. He drank so much water that Martin Oakes was surprised he didn't float away. But his river-bed voice remained dry: "Now, you knew you were going to lose that hand, Martin. Fine. An accurate deduction. But for a measly hundred fifty, you missed the opportunity to see some very interesting cards. For fifty bucks a card, I can tell you, it would have been worth it." He used the deck to whisk flecks of his dried skin off the table.

"Each player has his own style," Martin Oakes said defensively.

"I'm not talking about style. I'm talking about substance."

Martin Oakes shuffled his deck. "Talk is a weapon, too."

"Tell me," Smooth Jake said, his voice not just dry, but cold. "Do you want to play cards or be a card player?"

•

Martin Oakes's game continued to fall apart. There were no further outbursts from Smooth Jake. If anything, he looked ready to fall asleep again. But when Martin Oakes stopped looking at his face and instead projected its reflection onto the poker table, he no longer saw fatigue but an implacable resolve. Smooth Jake's play became more aggressive, his betting more vigorous. He stopped drinking water. His laugh changed from a hiss in his throat to a hollow rattle under his rib cage. He barely seemed to move in his chair. Martin Oakes could imagine venom dripping from the invisible corners of Smooth Jake's reptilian mouth. Ten thousand dollars ahead and sensing the almost complete paralysis in his victim, Smooth Jake was coiled for the kill.

"Martin," he said pleasantly after winning a game of seven-card hold 'em, "you have a tic." Martin Oakes had an image of himself in the window of a burning building while Smooth Jake stood stories below, trying to toss him up a life preserver. "It's almost imperceptible," Smooth Jake went on, "and it's not really a tic but a reaction that you share with the human race in general, and with fair-skinned, blue- or green-eyed people in particular. So far, it has cost you about four thousand dollars." Smooth Jake let the word dollars slip ever so gently off his tongue. "Chinese opium dealers used to look for the same tic in the British explorers with whom they traded. You see, Martin, when you get a particularly good hand--on limited observation, I would say three of a kind or better--your pupils dilate. The Chinese used to watch the British, waiting for their eyes to dilate, knowing that once they did, the British were ready to deal. The British would continue to talk tough, but again and again, their eyes would betray them, and the Chinese would wait patiently and finally get their price. For the British, it was a certain quantity of opium. For you, it's three of a kind or better. I haven't determined the exact cutoff point." His tone was cordial, but the current that ran beneath it was mocking. Martin Oakes could feel the track lights on Smooth Jake's side of the table boring into each of his eyes. "The fact is, Martin, you are already on your way to curing this problem. Your facial muscles are under complete control, your breathing is relaxed and even, and you move your hands with admirable confidence and economy." Smooth Jake massaged his eyelids and continued: "For most people, the effect is temporary, lasting, I should think, not more than three or four seconds. You might try lowering your eyelids a bit when you first get your cards, then once again when you draw."

"Thank you," Martin Oakes said quietly.

"It could save you a lot of money," Smooth Jake said. "Provided you have a future in this game, which I'm afraid at the moment doesn't appear likely."

After playing five more hands and winning only one, Martin Oakes asked for an adjournment until the following afternoon.

"No problem," Smooth Jake said, only $3000 away from retiring Martin Oakes forever. "We have plenty of time."

Something in that simple remark bolstered Martin Oakes's spirits more than advice about his telltale pupils, but he couldn't yet attach an explanation to it. "Anyone ever walk out of The Little Boltons a winner?" he asked.

"Not yet," Smooth Jake said blandly.

"So this will be the first time," Martin Oakes said.

It was dawn before he fell asleep. When he woke up, his sweat formed a bond between his skin and the bed sheets. He went for a swim.

"How's the game going?" Meghan Warner asked from the side of the pool. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a halter top. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.

"One of us is having fun."

"Jake says it's almost over."

"It's far from over."

"What will you do?" she asked. "I mean, if you lose?"

"I'll worry about that if I lose. At the moment, I'm still planning to win."

"What will you do if you win?"

He laughed. He liked Meghan Warner very much. "You've got me there," he said.

•

Martin Oakes entered the hot, windowless room with a cracked wooden box under his arm. The box was caked with coal dust and gun grease. Martin Oakes put it down on the table. "If you don't have any objections, I was wondering if we could play for a while with my chips."

Smooth Jake waved a hand over the table. "Just as long as we play with my cards."

Martin Oakes shuffled the cards and offered them to Smooth Jake for the cut. Smooth Jake waved his hand over the table."Deal them." Martin Oakes dealt a hand of seven-card stud. Smooth Jake glanced at his two down cards. He pushed $100 into the pot. "Where did you get these chips, Martin, at a gas station?" Martin Oakes didn't respond. Instead, he sat quietly in his chair. Ten minutes later, Smooth Jake's $100 bet was still sitting in the middle of the table and Martin Oakes was still sitting quietly in his chair. Slowly, Smooth Jake's eyes drifted up to his opponent. "Well?"

"Well what?" Martin Oakes asked.

"Are you going to see the bet?"

"I'm not sure. I'm thinking about it."

"So think."

Martin Oakes waited another five minutes and folded. Smooth Jake rubbed his pair of aces together once before replacing them in the deck. A good hand wasted. Not to mention 15 minutes.

The next six hands took two hours to play. Smooth Jake won another $1000. Martin Oakes carefully analyzed every card, every bet. Sometimes his mind would wander and he would imagine Meghan Warner floating around in the house. Two hours into the session, he lifted half a stack of white chips and let them fall out of his hand one at a time back onto the table. He liked the clicking sound and repeated the movement several times while he tried to decide whether or not to see a $200 bet.

Smooth Jake glared at him. "Do you really think there's anything to be gained in putting things off for another day, or another week?"

"When you've been playing as badly as I have, it's a good idea to question your decisions," Martin Oakes said, "then question them again."

"Only answers are going to help you."

"Then I must ask for your patience while I search for them." He could think of only one possible answer, and he was already acting on it. Holding a stack of alternating red and white chips, he let them fall one at a time onto the table, creating an uneven peppermint-striped tower.

"Count it as many times as you wish," Smooth Jake said, "and it will still come out to two thousand dollars."

"I'll see your two hundred and raise it another three."

"Call."

"Look at my pupils, Jake."

"I don't have to look at your pupils."

"Then," Martin Oakes said, spreading a full house on the table, "look at my cards."

Smooth Jake showed nothing as Martin Oakes raked in the pot. "Your confidence must be dwindling, if it takes you that long to bet up a full boat."

"We have plenty of time," Martin Oakes said, certain now that time was the one thing Smooth Jake did not have plenty of, shuffling the cards so slowly that he could hear each one tick into place. "I'm through losing. It may take me awhile, but I'm going to beat you, Jake."

"Anything's possible," Smooth Jake said, "but not in poker."

Martin Oakes won another $500 before they adjourned for the day. When he returned to his room, Martha the cook was waiting for him.

"Mr. Warner says to tell you there won't be any sit-down dinner tonight," she said. "I'll tell you what we've got, you tell me what you want, and I'll send it up."

A knock on the door announced the arrival of his food at exactly eight o'clock. There was no one in the hall. He picked up the tray and took it over to the bed. "Well,I'll be damned," Martin Oakes said, lifting up his cloth napkin. There was a bill underneath it:

5 nights @ $100 per ............ $500

6 breakfasts @ $5 per ........... $30

6 lunches @ $10 per ............ $60

6 dinners @ $20 per ............ $120

Total: $710

•

The next day, Martin Oakes won $2000 playing only 12 hands. Smooth Jake directed his remarks to Martin Oakes only once, reminding him that they were playing poker, not chess, but both of them knew that, in many ways, chess was what their game had become. Chess without time clocks.

Five days later, Martin Oakes won back his original $15,000 and took a $4000 bite out of Smooth Jake's initial stake. Meghan Warner no longer floated through the house. She ricocheted. Martin Oakes spotted her careening down the main staircase at one in the morning and caught her by the shoulders.

"Have you taken something?"

"Taken something?" she asked, leaning forward, neck rubbery, laugh skittering across the room like a speedboat over a lake. "Why, Martin, isn't it obvious? I never had to take anything. It was all given to me."

"Come on," he said gently, slipping his arm under hers and pressing his hand against her back. "I'll help you to your room."

"Follow me," she said, "and I will show you wonders beyond your richest imagination." She flung open a door to the cellar and scurried down the stairs, holding her skirt. The hall at the bottom of the stairs was black. Martin Oakes waited there until she threw on the light in an adjacent room. He followed the light and found her, holding a bowling ball. "A brand-new bowling alley!" she announced. The room was three times as long as it was wide. "Two lanes," she continued, with professional enthusiasm in her voice. "Automatic pin reset. Overhead electronic scoring. Genuine plastic chairs. Shoes to fit absolutely every size. Care to roll a string or two?"

"No, thanks."

"No one ever does," she said, rolling her ball into the gutter. She disappeared back up the stairs. When he walked out to the foyer, she waved him down to another room he had never been in. "Behind these doors," she said, swinging them open, "Virginia's most state-of-the-art video arcade!" Martin Oakes peered into the room. Cars sped up imaginary highways and tumbled off imaginary cliffs. Pinball marquees flashed invitingly in the darkness.

"Jake installed this arcade for our staff," Meghan Warner said. "Isn't it something?" She walked to the back of the arcade. "And just around this corner," she said, with a graceful sweep of her hand, "a new pool table." Dust clung to the table's felt surface. "I think of you as a black football shoe, Martin," Meghan Warner said. "Ankle high, with big metal cleats. Like the ones Johnny Unitas used to wear."

"You're too young to know about Johnny Unitas."

"Jake was a big Colts fan until they sneaked off to Indianapolis. Can you imagine anyone sneaking off to Indianapolis? In the middle of the night? I can't."

"Maybe from Baltimore. I think you had better get to bed."

"Stop the game. Please stop it."

"It's too late to stop it." He took her arm. She felt as stiff as a mannequin. "Jake wouldn't want to, anyway."

"How dare you touch me," she said savagely. He released her arm. "You're taking this house away from us as if it meant nothing to you."

"I'm not after your house."

"I don't want to leave The Little Boltons," she said. "But Jake will make me."

•

A week later, Martin Oakes had Smooth Jake down to $3000, and the sparse room had a fine dusting of dried skin. Remorse crept slowly into Martin Oakes's consciousness, and it was only with great difficulty that he managed to keep it from taking a firm hold there. They hadn't reached the end yet, the two of them, but the end had become so palpable, it was as if they were already watching themselves replay the last few hands in slow motion.

"No one's ever taken his time playing me before," Smooth Jake said tonelessly. "Everyone else has always been in a hurry. Usually in a hurry to lose."

"Outlasting you was the only thing I could think of that might work," Martin Oakes replied without looking up from his cards, almost ashamed that such a simple strategy could have produced such brilliant results. His hand forced more chips into the middle of the table.

"I wasn't expecting it," Smooth Jake said, voice still without inflection. He matched Martin Oakes's bet. "Of course, I should have seen it coming. Anyone who can wait four years to get a game will have the patience to play them tight for a month until things start going his way."

"I suppose as victories go," Martin Oakes said, "it's a little tainted."

"Everything's tainted," Smooth Jake said. His face was placid, even though his resolve had long since surrendered to fatigue, and his concentration had stretched out over time until, tight and brittle, it, too, had finally burst. But his calm remained. Like Martin Oakes, he had never fully pondered what life would be like without poker to sustain it. "Fold," he said.

Smooth Jake slid the rest of his chips into the pot. "I'll cut you for the rest."

"Is that really the way you want to end it?"

"I'm beginning to think that luck is underrated."

Smooth Jake brushed the table with his cards, even though there was no skin to whisk away. "I used to play the violin. Not well and not often. I once failed to take adequate precautions for my safety before a game in New Jersey, was falsely accused of cheating and got the fingers on my left hand broken as a consequence. It has always been a mystery to me, how they knew which hand to break. In any case, I couldn't play very well anymore, but I still had enough dexterity to deal."

"Did you win the game?"

"Well, I suppose that depends on how you look at it, doesn't it, Martin?" He put his deck of cards on the table in front of Martin Oakes. "Pick a card."

Martin Oakes fanned out the deck and let his finger tips trace a path over all the cards before finally removing one from the pack. He flipped the card over. It was the ten of spades.

Smooth Jake found the card he wanted and parted the fan on either side of it until it was the only card left in the middle of the table. He glanced quickly at the card before flipping it over. "Seven of hearts," he said. "So much for luck."

Martin Oakes picked up his ten. "I'd like to keep this if you don't mind." Smooth Jake waved his gnarled left hand. Martin Oakes put the card in his pocket and stood. "I'd be happy to settle the bill for my room and meals in cash."

"Forget that," Smooth Jake said. "Please don't leave, however, until you've said goodbye to Meg."

Martin Oakes thought how nice it would be to raise his arms and flatten his palms against the low ceiling. But he folded his hands behind his back instead. He didn't even look up. "Will you make her leave The Little Boltons?"

"She's the one who calls it a poker palace."

"You could stay."

"And do what? Paint the columns white?" Another wave. "A reporter from the Post has been calling about our game. I don't suppose you would happen to know how he found out we were playing?"

"The only thing I've done on the phone is order dinner."

"Good. All the same. They'll be after you." Smooth Jake closed his eyes and tilted his head back until it was resting on the top of his chair. "I appreciate discretion, Martin. I also practice it."

"Silence wasn't part of our bet."

"Forget about our bet. Your silence is more important to Meg than it is to me."

Martin Oakes bowed slightly. No problem showing a little deference, as long as the old lizard wasn't looking. "OK, Jake. Tell her I won't say a word."

"You can tell her yourself," Smooth Jake said, nodding back without opening his eyes. "She's waiting for you by the pool."

"'Well,' Smooth Jake said, 'I'm damned if the man doesn't look like a poker player.'"

"Smooth Jake let the blinds down on his eyes. 'If I win, you stop playing poker. Permanently.'"