Just a Game
by blogdramedy
The stakes were high and the chips falling like coins out of an old man’s torn coat pocket.
Come on you bastard. Jodie stared at the dealer, her face a study in luck gone wrong. Give me a Queen and we’ll call it quits.
Down to her final fifty dollar bill, Jodie knew this deal could easily be her last. The cards came down in front of the three men to her right. Seven. Deuce. Jack.
For her…a Queen.
“You got some kind of luck, lady.” It was the dealer.
Jodie smiled. “It’s just a game. Just a game.”
—
A drabble is a very short story of exactly 100 words. Exactly…so no cheating. Feel free to join in and write your own drabbles on Fridays and tag them with “friday drabble” and on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble. Thanks to Stevil for the inspiration.
I love the simplicity of the image here. It draws you in. I felt like I was at that table. I folded, glad to see the lady dealt a queen. You’re one helluva writer.
This story reminds of the third opera in Wong Kar Wai’s “My Blueberry Nights” I highly recommend it.
Yet another great post!
Thanks! I wrote this as a follow up to Thursday’s post on games with angles. I do like these drabbles…thanks to Stevil for the inspiration. :-
I keep meaning to check out “My Blueberry Nights” ever since your interview on Blogdramedy…I’m in Halifax for the next two weeks so maybe I can pick up a copy.
I’ve got a friend who “optioned out.” When I went to find a link, I was surprised to see MO was the first state to start this program! http://tinyurl.com/44gyjfo Jodie sounds a little like her.
As a side-note, she went to a GA meeting once, left and went to a casino! First and last 12 Step for her!
As I think I mentioned in Thursday’s post, I have a slightly additive personality…luckily for me, I can stop temptation in its tracks without too much angst. I did the gambling thing for while when an new casino opened in a city I was living in a few years ago. I didn’t lose or win much. There was one evening when the Mister and I hit the casino playing the video games and we won over $800…we left to walk home around 1am, looked at each other and decided, what the hell…and went back to spend the rest of the night there having fun and losing what we won. We walked out around 7am with enough won money to pay for breakfast. Nothing wrong with that! It was a one-off and everyone’s allowed a night like that.
Was she counting?
Counting! Of course not. That’s illegal. She was subtracting…that’s not the same.
Hahaha! If you say so…
I didn’t know how to react the first time I read this drabble, but after reading it ten times over several days, I finally placed my finger on what I felt — I noticed that I held my breath when she was wishing for the queen. I think that is the power of this drabble — the ability to make the readers join in the emotion of Jodie.
Yeah…if she hadn’t gotten that queen I don’t know what i would have done.
Nope. Never been there. Never been there at all. Very very good.
Though any real gambler knows that 50s are bad luck. 20s and 100s are all you should ever have on you.
Ha! I think you protest toooo much.
On the $50…it’s all she had left after she paid for the male escorts.