Chapter 17: 17. Trying The Challenge, And It Really Needs A Different Approach

The poker room was smaller and quieter than the main floor, and it was lit differently, creating a concentrated seriousness that settled over the table as the players engaged in a game for amounts that required their full attention.

’Ain’t looking all VIP for me... just a little cheaper than the last one I used, which is Las Vegas.’

There were seven seats at the table, four of which were occupied. Madison Reed sat in seat three, her drink resting on the table and her clutch on the armrest beside her. She examined her cards with a relaxed focus that suggested either a strong hand or exceptional skill at feigning uncertainty.

’There she is...’

’Let’s see how tough are ya...’

Mike bought in. The dealer gave him a nod, and he took seat six.

For the first twenty minutes, he played correctly and said nothing to anyone. This was his standard.

New players at a poker table who start talking right away are often individuals seeking attention, and those who seek attention tend to lose money for the same reasons. But Mike plays the table, not the room, and he gives himself time to learn the room before he try to operate in it.

He watched Madison Reed play two hands.

She was skilled without being showy. She understood that the essence of poker lay in managing information, with the cards being less important than reading the players who held them.

She bet with the steady confidence of someone who had decided what she wanted to do three moves before the moment arrived. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

She folded on a hand that Mike believed she could have won, which could indicate either discipline or a keen read on the player to her left—an assessment she had made before Mike had a chance to evaluate the situation himself.

He was leaning toward the idea of a specific read.

And...

He won the next hand from someone else at the table, cleanly, without drawing much attention to it. He raked in the chips without saying a word.

"Damn, I didn’t even know I was that lucky," Mike said intentionally.

Madison glanced over. Just for a second, with the professional assessment of a poker player looking at a new variable on the table.

’Oh...?’

She said nothing and looked back at her cards.

’Almost... but still, I’m going all in.’

Mike played the next hand carefully and lost it in a way that was technically honest, because he had actually not had anything worth playing, and sometimes the most honest thing that happens at a poker table is also the most frustrating.

The player to Mike’s right, a heavyset man in his fifties who carried himself like someone accustomed to being the most experienced person at any table, spoke to the dealer and then turned his attention to Mike. "Ya new here?"

"Yeah, first time in this room, but I’ve played poker before," Mike said. "So what? Want to accuse me of cheating because of how bad you are?"

"Nah... it was actually a good game," the man said, with the approximate sincerity of someone complimenting the opposition. "I can tolerate losing, so it’s fine."

Madison Reed dealt her next hand, looked at it, and then looked at the table with the expression of someone who found something mildly amusing.

"What brings you to Erosyne?" she said, and it took Mike a full beat to realize she was talking to him.

He looked at her.

’Jackpot.’

She was looking back with a slightly detached curiosity, as if she had heard every opening line ever used on her. This made her genuinely interested in what would happen when there wasn’t one.

"A document," Mike said.

She tilted her head very slightly. "What kind?"

"The kind that made a good case," he said.

She considered that. "Did it hold up?"

"So far," he said.

The dealer moved and the round shifted, and Madison looked back at her cards. However, the corner of Madison’s mouth had moved in a way that resembled a smile, though it was not quite one.

Mike looked at his cards and thought about what the system had said.

Do not simply do what you did with Petricia.

This one has seen every version of that.

That was accurate. She was a woman who walked into rooms where people noticed her but had stopped caring, played poker well enough to belong in this room, and had worked in an industry built on performing versions of things for public consumption.

She had seen every version of every approach because she had either experienced them or watched them play out for other people.

The approach that worked on someone like Petricia, built on patience and proximity and giving a lonely woman permission to be seen, would get noticed in about forty seconds by someone like Madison Reed.

She’d clock it, label it, and dismiss it.

This meant that the approach needed to be fundamentally different.

What it was, exactly, he hadn’t decided yet.

But he had time. And the buy-in for this room was non-refundable regardless, so he might as well stay for a few more hands and find out what else he could learn about how Madison Reed played a table when she thought the other players were beneath her attention.

He looked at his cards.

’Ah fuck... it’s fucking dogshit.’

Then he looked at her.

Then he did something he almost never did at a table: he placed a bet on a hand that was not technically worth betting on, purely to see how she would interpret it as either confidence or recklessness.

’Let’s see if she takes the bait.’

She saw the bet, looked at her cards once more, and folded.

She glanced at him afterward, her look brief yet precise. This time, the assessment in her eyes was more deliberate than automatic.

"Interesting," she remarked, her gaze shifting slightly away from him as if she were contemplating her own thoughts.

Mike stacked his chips without responding.

He was going to need a completely different strategy for this one, and he was excited to figure out what it was.

’Alright... I think I need to find a different approach at this point.’

’I don’t want to waste my time more playing this shit, and I think... breaking an actress is more fun with...’

’...blackmail.’

...

He found Gerald at 22:45, still at his machine but with the shorter, more resigned movements of someone who had made their peace with the evening’s outcome and was just finishing up.

"Alright, that’s enough," Mike said. "Your wife is waiting, so it’s best to go home now."

Gerald looked at his machine, at the screen, and then at Mike.

"Yeah," he said. "Sure... let’s go."

He cashed out whatever was left, and they walked toward the exit without much conversation. Gerald’s shoulders were in the position Mike had seen before, the specific posture of a man carrying the weight of a decision he’d made repeatedly and was going to make again next Saturday.

In the cab back, Gerald looked out the window for most of the ride. Then he said, "I’m not proud of it."

Mike looked at him.

"The gambling," Gerald said. "I know that’s what it is."

"I’m not an idiot."

"Okay," Mike said.

"It’s just that everything else requires me to be someone specific," Gerald said. "And here I’m just a guy at a machine."

Mike thought about that for a moment.

"Your wife runs your building alone three nights a week," he said.

Gerald was quiet.

"I’m not saying that to make you feel bad," Mike said. "I’m saying it because you just told me everything else requires you to be someone specific."

"She faces the same issue, but she lacks a place to go where she can just be herself."

The cab turned onto Harwick Lane and slowed in front of the building.

Gerald remained silent for the last thirty seconds of the ride, then paid the driver and exited the cab with the demeanor of a man who had just heard something he needed to reflect on.

Mike let him go ahead and stood on the pavement for a moment, looking up at the building.

Petricia’s light was still on.

His phone buzzed once.

"Did he lose a lot?"

Mike typed back: "Some, and he’s going inside now."

A pause. Then: "Thank you."

He put the phone in his pocket and stood there for another few seconds, looking at the lit window, thinking about a poker room and a woman who had looked at him like a variable she hadn’t categorized yet.

Fifty-five percent on one target.

Zero on the other.

And a Thursday night that had just become considerably more interesting than he’d originally planned for.

He went inside.

’I need to do some research on her...’