The short story “Poker Face” by Dar Mavison is now available as part of the Know When to Hold’em, a Dreamspinner Press Anthology of Gay Erotic Short Stories about cowboys and gamblers from all over the world and throughout time.
Poker Face by Dar Mavison
Sneaking out of town after a poker game, Joe and Frank ride on together to the next town and find themselves stuck in a monsoon, holed up in a small hotel room. Passing the time by sleeping, telling stories, and sharing each other’s bodies, Joe teaches Frank that facing up to your past is the key to facing your future.
This collection includes stories by Madeleine Urban, Catt Ford, Connie Bailey, John Simpson, and D. G. Parker.
Purchase this collection online, as a e-book or in paperback.
Read an excerpt from “Poker Face” below.
Frank Jackson stood by the window of a small hotel room and watched the rain pour onto the parched landscape. It must have been a miracle. He knew it was what everyone had been praying for. The land had been drying up, water holes disappearing, people getting desperate. Two months with nary a drop, but today the sky had opened, and no one was going anywhere with the roads washed out like that.
He turned to look at the man lying on the bed. Lord, he was beautiful – long and lean and dark, reserved and graceful. It was a hard-earned grace, if what he’d said was true. Frank could never tell. People invent all kinds of stories to make themselves look more interesting. Sometimes they’re exaggerations, a few harmless embellishments on the facts. Sometimes they’re outright lies. Frank had long given up sorting out truth from fiction. He listened to the stories as just that. Stories. Worthwhile if they were entertaining or made a good point or had enough of a grain of truth to seem real, but not to be taken too seriously. Sometimes he told them that way, too.
The only thing you could know for sure was what you’d seen with your own eyes. Frank had seen this man sitting at the poker table, still and mysterious. The others were drinking and talking, animated in some way. Even when they were trying to bluff, sitting still and looking sly, you could see them moving inside their skins. But this man didn’t twitch or move a muscle, nothing showed. The consummate poker face.
It was striking to see all that serenity in the middle of a saloon. The town wasn’t nearly as wild as it used to be, but the saloons were close to lawless zones. Fights weren’t punished, although you might be asked to take it outside if too many of the furnishings were put at risk. You gambled at your own peril, because there were no rules to stop cheating, and nothing to stop the cheated from exacting a painful revenge if the culprit was caught. That particular saloon didn’t house the most serious card game in town – that would be in the back room of the one down the street where the stage stopped – but it was serious enough, and this stranger stood out at the table as more than just a foreigner. He was different in a fundamental way.
No one was up by much, and no one else was down to any great extent. Frank didn’t have enough cash to want to join. But he watched. He watched this man play hand after hand, even and methodical, seeming to let the others control the course of the game, until the drink had flowed sufficiently for the kitty to grow to an enticing size. Then he watched him call.
“Jacks over nines,” he said with that queer accent. He scooped the cash across the table and shoved it into the inside pocket of his coat. “And with that gentlemen, I wish you all a fine evening.”
There was a fair bit of commotion over that particular bit of bad timing, and Frank feared the man might be in serious trouble. It’s poor manners to leave a game right after winning a pot that big, without giving the losers any chance to recoup. But this man turned to his chief accuser and said something so quiet and low no one else could hear, and that was the end of it. Impressive, Frank thought, and at the time he figured that really was the end of it.
Purchase this collection online, as a e-book or in paperback.
