filled her living room. The biggest cigar was perched between Joe Bob’s own teeth. Anna could hardly believe her eyes. While Joe Bob often smoked in the house, he usually confined the activity to his study. The two of them had had this standing compromise forever. He had never, ever contaminated her living room before, and how here he was, smoking it up, and using her heirloom cut crystal bowl as an ash tray. And he wasn’t the only one smoking either. Dick Richardson, Chief Scott, and the PetroPlex executives were smoking too.
“For crying out loud!” Anna said in exasperation. “I am never going to get this smell out of the drapes!”
Delmont shrugged. “You’re the one who’s been pestering me to host the game here. We play poker, we smoke cigars, and we drink whiskey. Three of life’s simple pleasures. That’s the way it is.”
“Except for me,” Judge Hooper said. “I don’t smoke.”
“Until tonight,” Dick said.
Anna noticed that Dick had been fiddling with something in his pocket. Something he clearly didn’t want anyone else to see. But she was too distressed about the cigar smoke to dwell on it too much.
“Come on, Judge,” Dick said. “Everybody needs a vice. Lemme show you how it’s done.”
Dick crammed a cigar into Judge Hooper’s mouth, flicked a flame into life, and lit the end.
“Okay, now suck,” Dick said.
Judge Hooper did, and promptly began hacking up a storm.
“Don’t tell him to suck,” Joe Bob said. “He ain’t some fairy like your fancypants paralegal. It’s more like a manly puff.”
Judge Hooper rested the cigar in the bowl and took a swig of whiskey to calm his cough. “Anna dear,” he said. “Have you met Gerald Fitz and Frederick Lewis?” He gestured to the two bigwigs from PetroPlex.
“Not officially,” Anna said. “I heard of you before though, of course.”
The two men politely stood and shook Anna’s hand. Lewis was a puny-looking guy with dark hair, which he wore in a deeply-parted comb-over that did little to disguise an advanced state of baldness. Fitz was a middle-aged guy with a sour face. He looked like a real curmudgeon.
“Pleased to meet you,” Lewis said stiffly, in a manner that suggested he clearly wasn’t.
“Likewise,” Fitz said. His voice sounded like he’d eaten sandpaper for lunch, breakfast, and dinner every day of his entire life.
“And I don’t believe I got the chance to say hello when I walked in, either.” Mayor Fillion, a tall, lean man with a kind smile and wavy gray hair, stood and shook her hand. “You’re looking mighty pretty this evening, Anna. Are you doing something different with your hair?”
Even though Anna knew he was almost literally blowing smoke up her skirt, she flushed with pleasure nevertheless. “I been to one of those Aveda salons in Houston recently,” she said. “Joe Bob sent me on an overnight beauty spa trip just last week.”
“I’ll bet he does that all the time,” Dick said, giving Joe Bob a knowing look. “That must be how you stay looking so good.”
Anna barely registered the kick Joe Bob delivered to Dick under the table. “He does,” she said. “He is so good to me.”
Joe Bob buried his face in his whiskey glass and took a deep swig. He banged the empty glass back down on the table and glared at Anna. “You’re holding up the game,“ he said.
Anna walked over to the bar to grab the whiskey decanter so she could refill Joe Bob’s glass.
Mayor Fillion flipped over a card from the deck and added it to the four that were already face up on the table. Anna knew they were playing Texas Hold ’em, and she had a pretty good understanding of how it all worked, but she didn’t fully understand the intricacies of the game. The cards on the table were the ace of spades, the ace of diamonds, the jack of clubs, the ten of hearts, and the two of clubs.
Fitz grunted and pushed his sizable stack of chips towards the center of the table. The entire stack. “All in.”
Several of the other men swore.
“Fold,” Lewis and Chief Scott said simultaneously.
“Me too.” The mayor flopped his two cards on the table face down and swept them aside.
“I’m out,” Hooper said, attempting to take another drag on the cigar, only to wind up coughing violently.
Joe Bob stared at Fitz intently before also folding.
That left only Dick.
Anna could feel the tension in the room. She didn’t know how much money each chip represented, but judging from the expressions on each