The Final Hand

Joshua wanted to remain looking composed, but realised he had to remove his jacket. It was single-breasted, made of dark blue linen and he thought it gave him the air of a senior academic or an upscale media professional. All it was actually doing, though, was making him sweat like a pig - and in his line of work, that was inadvisable. Why spend years perfecting the ability to look dead behind the eyes, when your skin was betraying you by leaking rank, salty, staining evidence in front of the whole table. It was a bigger tell than any facial expression; almost as though the Powers that Be wanted him to suffer immediately for daring to present himself as something other than the pathetic, jobbing poker player that he actually was. Someone somewhere had endowed him with the ability to smile, frown, laugh, and show surprise and sorrow - yet he’d spent much of his professional life trying to erase any trace of those things from his demeanour. So maybe he deserved to get drenched in his own telltale secretions.

Either way, it was making life easier for the others at the table: Andre could smell prey from miles away, and almost revealed a slight smirk – but instantly disciplined himself, mentally punching all emotion from his mind and body. Simeon’s nostrils detected blood also, as he periodically looked at Joshua over the top of his glasses - never lingering long enough to make it obvious that he was taking any undue interest.

That just left Angelos and Nikolai. Neither of them had a hand to play, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy the action. They all knew, after all, that Joshua had much to fight for that night. Illegal, high stakes events tend to attract some serious addicts, but with a four-figure buy-in they still had to be solvent enough to get there in the first place - and that meant potential losses of a serious magnitude, and rich pickings for the winners.

Whilst his composure was beginning to go, Joshua still diligently rattled through dozens of different scenarios in his head - and he almost smiled briefly as he told himself he was overthinking everything as though his life depended on it. Because it kind of did.

Pretty much everything had gone: His marriage? Dust. Kids? Clearly been told not to have anything to do with him. He made the effort on birthdays and at Christmas, and got the occasional letter or phone call in return. Nothing else. There was, he’d correctly concluded, another man in Sarah’s life – and he was unable to blame her for wanting to move on. Hundreds of nights had been erased from their time together as he told her he was working late; celebrating someone’s divorce with a boys’ night in; going to yoga or the gym. But she knew where he was: At the Golden Turret, the Magic Platinum Lounge or the Royal Velvet Suite - or whatever they were now called. They changed names like Lady Gaga changes outfits.

At first, as he left those places behind and moved onto the shady world of private games, he felt his star ascend. He’d be back. He’d show them all. Wealthier, fitter, better-looking and more together than ever. For quite a few months he’d felt like he was James Bond every time he’d arrived back at his skanky single bedroom apartment; living life on the edge in order to live it to the full. He’d make his way home as the sun came up, hoping the early-to-work brigade were watching him with intrigue, wondering who the international man of mystery was with the Ralph Lauren shirt and the TAG watch, stinking of smoke, spirits and pure, unbridled excitement. The fact that he was riding on the same tube network as them, rather than in a cab or limo didn’t really occur to him - and as the funds gradually dwindled, he always held onto the image of himself as someone who wasn’t afraid to play the game of life.

But now, watched by Andre, Simeon, Angelos and Nikolai he realised what everyone could always see. That the game was playing him. And it had made the most of its good hands. His face seemed to be melting; flesh becoming wax, slowly but irreversibly sliding off his skull. The pallid, hollowed out look that followed his first eight-month bout of serious poker was of comfort at first. It made him look pale and interesting; a face with stories to tell; battles won and lost. Eyes with the knowledge of things that other, more conventional men, had no idea about. This, though, quickly gave way to a crumbling shadow of his erstwhile photogenic appearance - and as he fell, the kind of women latching onto him became the kind that inspired him to stay in and drown his sorrows rather than go out and be seen with them.

When he moved out, Sarah had slashed his all of his clothes before he went to collect them - and he’d looked her in the face without blinking, genuinely thinking it was a sign from above. That he was shedding a skin, and starting afresh. Exactly what the hell he’d been thinking working on the assumption that more gambling was the way forward was a head-scratcher at this point, but what was done was done. And he’d really gone and done it.

The sweaty jacket had come from a charity shop, as had much of his wardrobe these days. He was living on credit, most of which had been taken from some highly dubious lenders – at least one of which knew where his family lived.

So, he’d made himself a deal: No point in being half-arsed about being a gambler; he might as well do it properly. So there he was, going for broke with players who – he was one hundred percent sure – had far deeper pockets than him. Andre’s glasses alone looked to be worth well over five hundred. Cartier, if he wasn’t mistaken. Simeon’s beautifully understated wedding band looked like real white gold. Four figures, easy. It was obvious that Joshua was the only one at the table wearing cheap shit.

“At least”, thought Joshua, “it doesn’t matter what you leave this world in. You’re naked on the day you’re born, and no amount of fancy clothes and accessories is going to guild your skeleton as it crumbles into dust in the incinerator.”

If, of course, it actually came to that. He’d made his decision mostly subconsciously over the last couple of months, but it had finally hardened into reality. He’d either win big tonight, or face a lifestyle and future that would make ending his life a relatively appealing proposition. He wasn’t sure about the method, sensibly deciding to worry about that if and when the time came. Plan for success, never failure.

The thought of his life ending, however, was starting to edge its way from the boundary of his mind into a more central position as he pushed a large mound of black and green chips into the centre of the table. With quite literally everything to play for, his focus was bound to be less than optimal - but he’d more-or-less given up trying to seem detached by that point anyway. His eyes were like saucers; his face stiff, as he eyed Andre and Simeon in turn. The move was obvious, but he was keen to underline it with the correct announcement. It was the most significant move he’d ever make, so it deserved the full protocol:

‘All in.’

He gave a little sniff, trying to seem casual; and whilst he then made a point of focussing on the Danien Hirst artwork on the wall rather than their faces, he could see them both in his peripheral vision. Andre looked bemused, although concern was visibly etching its way on Simeon’s face. Angelos and Nikolai were equally riveted, eyeing each other briefly before turning their heads back to the action.

It was Simeon’s turn, though, and whilst he wasn’t as agitated as Joshua, he was well aware that just because someone has visibly gone on tilt doesn’t mean you’ve got a better hand than they have. His eyes were blank, making dozens of calculations, processing endless logic whilst trying to factor in both past and present behaviour from Joshua. Ultimately, he took a deep sigh and pushed his cards to the centre, face down.

One down, one to go. Whatever happened, Joshua knew he’d done this in some style – though admittedly Andre was more of a threat. Much more, judging by the confident look on his face. He raised a single eyebrow at Joshua, who was busy pushing out thoughts of self-annihilation by willing Andre to evaporate on the spot. Utterly senseless to any onlooker, but it’s only when you’re sat in the hottest of seats that you fully understand what some people go though.

Andre started stacking his chips into neat piles – hopefully, Joshua thought, playing for time. Trying to make him sweat just a bit more, before caving in. Once he was finished he gave a slightly cheeky grin, before pushing up Joshua’s pulse to near-critical levels by double-checking how much he’d raised by.

And then he matched it.

Joshua had never thrown up out of nerves in his life, but had to choke it back, pretending to have a cough.

‘You OK?’ asked Simeon.

‘Yep, no problem.’

Or so he hoped.

It suddenly dawned on Joshua that there was no need to pretend any more, slumping forlornly into his chair. The room wasn’t quite swimming in front of him, but he was definitely closer to having an out-of-body experience than he’d ever been before.

‘OK’, said Andre. ‘No point in hanging around.’ He gave an open-handed gesture, letting Joshua go first. Fear mutated into terror, which Joshua could no longer pass off as anything else. His hands trembled visibly as he turned over his four kings. Somehow, he managed to remind himself as he did so, that this would be very hard to beat.

Andre’s face gave nothing away. No elation. That bode well.

But he had a straight flush.

The room stopped swimming for Joshua. It somehow righted itself, becoming hideously, horribly real - and then started to spin. He had no idea which way down was; gravity seemed to have been put on hold, leaving some sort of nightmare cakewalk in its place.

Somehow, he manged to make it to the gents. People were saying things to him as he went - but he had no idea who or what. Sat in one of the stalls with the seat lid down, his mind worked with surprising efficiency. Astonishing self-candour, in fact.

After just slightly less than one full minute, he exited the upstairs room where they’d held the game, walked down to the bar, left the building, walked into the December cold, through the shopping centre, over the pedestrian crossing, past the roundabout, over the metal crash barrier, onto the dual carriageway and threw himself straight under a large articulated lorry.

‘Told you’, said Nikolai, resisting the temptation to laugh. Obviously, that would have been in the worst possible taste had he done so in front of Andre and Simeon, who were still sat at the table. But that wasn’t going to happen, given that he and Angelos were watching from afar.

About as far away as you can get, really.

‘Yes, you did’, said Angelos. He took his defeat well, as anyone would expect given who he was. He licked his lips, which had understandably become rather dry, before looking at the individual he’d finally accepted - after an endless series of eternities - as someone he’d always be in a co-dependent relationship with. ‘You’ve had quite the winning streak recently, haven’t you?’

‘Well, you know’, said Nikolai. ‘Luck of the D — ‘

‘You can do better than that!’ snapped Angelos, refusing to let him finish his sentence.

Nikolai laughed, and Angelos smiled to himself, inhaling and exhaling deeply before continuing with an almost philosophical tone:

‘I wonder if he believed in both of us of, or just me…’

Nikolai shrugged. ‘You get them all, in the end. That’s all that matters.’

It was Angelos’s turn to shrug. ‘Yeah. Shame we can’t tell some of them that whilst they’re alive. There’s some serious paranoia among the really religious ones.’

‘I know’, grinned Nikolai. ‘Fun, isn’t it?’

Angelos gave him a sideways look. He could see the amusing side, but knew he had to be the responsible one.

Nikolai knew his place, too. But he got to have his fun often enough, and putting temptation into the path of people like Joshua was quite the rush. Especially when, as they did from time to time, he’d meet with his oppo for a good old-fashioned sportsman’s bet – and Joshua was so borderline that neither of them could resist a gamble.

Obviously, they’d both used everything in their power to get their respective desired outcomes: A possible second chance with Sarah; a couple of job opportunities; a suspected health scare that turned out to be inconsequential, to try and make him value his life more. But Nikolai’s insistence on endlessly planting “if only you hadn’t racked up so many debts” scenarios in Joshua’s head made for tough competition. At least the shuffling of the deck wasn’t something they could influence. That was down to Mother Nature; neither of them had any say over it.

The efforts they’d made to try and win were worthwhile for both of them, as playing a game like this wasn’t something they could do too often. For starters, the novelty would wear off - though more importantly, they had their own jobs to get on with. Constantly disrupting the flow of earthly fate to try and win their own indulgent little battles was not really what they were supposed to be doing.

That was why they only liked to bet on suicidal gamblers. They didn’t come along too often, and there was an irony to it all that made it seem appropriate. Plus, of course, they made sure that the stakes were never horrendously high – which meant they were only dabbling, and not treading on each others’ toes to any tangible degree.

The format for collecting their proverbial winnings was a little odd, but it seemed to work: Obviously neither could do the others’ job, so they’d simply take the occasional day off instead. Angelos, for example, had once spent the day stargazing instead of finding ways to stop Nikolai from instigating a front-page news landslide in Sri Lanka. Nikolai, conversely, turned a blind eye on one occasion when the new school in Mozambique opened up, that Angelos had been instrumental in creating. The staff and pupils will never know how close they’d come to being hit by the mother of all earthquakes.

As always, the two colleagues had agreed everything beforehand, and were well aware that welching was out of the question if they were to maintain an effective working relationship. Nikolai flexed his slender red hands and looked expectantly at Angelos:

‘You remember the deal, obviously...’

Angelos sighed. Nikolai had been pushing for the same forfeit several times in a row. ‘I don’t get it. Why another aircraft crash? What’s the attraction?’

‘Liner.’ Nikolai corrected him. ‘Airliner.’

‘Whatever.’

‘I thought I’d already explained. Witnessing the passengers on one of those going down is insanely good. I’ll get up to twenty of minutes watching literally hundreds of people panicking, praying and crapping themselves before being reassigned to us.’

He had a point. Despite his immense powers, Nikolai didn’t have multiple pairs of eyes and could only normally watch one or two people suffer at a time. In that sense, an air accident with multiple fatalities might just be the crème de la creme of unfortunate worldly incidents, and Angelos had been willing to up the stakes to several hundred potential deaths after his recent string of losses.

He was, therefore, going to have to sit back and let dozens and dozens of passengers plunge to a premature trip to Heaven. Ultimately not a bad outcome, but the thought of all the sheer terror that would precede it was, obviously, something he’d rather not contemplate - so Angelos turned his thoughts to their new names. Every time they reached the outcome of one of their bets, they liked to give each other a new moniker as well. It had become a tradition, and felt apt given that they only really hung out together when they’d found a new distressed gambler to wager on.

However, they’d been playing the same game for a few centuries, and consequently exhausted pretty much every new name imaginable - so they were now recycling some of the old ones. Their last bet had been a few years ago, involving a tempestuous marriage between two high-end lawyers in Athens; a kitchen knife, three bottles of Retsina and a badly concealed affair. They therefore picked two Greek-inspired names, though Angelos felt a bit unhappy coming up with yet another variation of Old Nick. Unfortunately, he’d been tied up trying to calm the waters of the English Channel in order to prevent a boatload of asylum seekers from drowning – and consequently didn’t have the time to come up with a better sobriquet.

Eternity, like life, can be terribly unfair sometimes.