-Red Dog is a version of poker. Just some random angsty introspection. Again.-
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Red Dog
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Some nights, when Jane can't sleep, he wanders round the hotel grounds. They are used to him, now, the night staff. They don't quite know what to make of him, this guest in the smart suit, with the sad eyes and the ready smile. But he remembers their names, and his Spanish is fluent, if oddly accented. It may be that Lupe, who devours celebrity magazines in her very rare off hours, knows his face, but she doesn't say.
Round the back of the buildings, past the facade and the side entrance to the kitchens. This isn't the rich, public part of the hotel. All the worn out and broken things rest here, everything a little dusty and tired.
Out there, you have – the audience, the guests, the marks. And then you have - the performers, the front of house, the show. But beyond that...The guests will never set eyes on some of these people. Unless they happen to have a blocked sink, the urge for a late night sandwich. Very few of them will look twice. Merv, Chavez, Irina, Freddo...he grew up around folk like this.
...Tullai, who had only been a few years older than him, watching his father with wide adoring eyes. She had truly believed, daughter of a snake-handling pastor from some place in the Appalachians, turned her back on her family to embrace the new ministry. It was Tullai who first taught him to cook...
...Old Harry, who ran the jenny on the midway, bright-eyed goblin of a man with a hoarse laugh, and a good many tattoos up his once-brawny arms, one of which was a little string of numbers...
... He'd been in a bus station, some place between Lafayette and Pasadena, and a guy had really not wanted to take 'no, thank you' as an answer. Then someone had loomed out of the night, had hit the man, several times, with technical precision, and had then given the shaken young Patrick hot black coffee and a serious talking to about safer places to sleep. Rober', thick Montreal accent further blurred by the fire which had taken half his face, hiding in the shadows, a sweet, shy man...
...Rosita, rubbing weary feet and still finding a smile for the young men and their outrageous flattery, letting them hang out in the employee's lounge. She'd left a son, back with her mother, scrubs toilets and sends money back so maybe he won't ever have to...
...Zorya, all tired eyes and cheekbones, pouring another cup from the samovar which she claims came from the palace in St. Petersburg. Lives in a world full of wonderful lies, not least of which is how the daughter of Russian aristocrats could come to be running a tatty teahouse off Venice Beach, dealing out a pack of greasy tarot cards...
Quiet, hard-faced men and women who don't step out into the limelight, just keep quietly making sure the show runs smoothly. These are the people who clean your rooms, who empty your trash, who cook the meals and wash the plates, or measure out their lives in cups of coffee in lonely diners besides the roads they never get to take.
One night, he'd found a handful of them playing cards. And Chavez had pushed a stool out with his foot, silent invite. These guys aren't whales. They aren't even minnows. Working stiffs, kicking back with a beer, and playing for matches.
He's not a gambler, not in the same way that his father was. Poker teaches you to read people, and it's a useful skill when you are short of funds, but he plays any game merely for the sake of winning it, not because of the money. After the first time, they don't let him deal, but there is laughter, and Merv punches him in the shoulder. Which is a great deal friendlier that the big maintenance guy punching him in the face, and almost a sign of approval.
So some nights, he takes himself down to the scruffy little courtyard, a man with tired eyes and a wicked grin, still a little out of place in his shirt sleeves and scuffed shoes. But then, he doesn't fit anywhere, really, now, has no place to be, but maybe here, propped on a busted chair, with the people who watch the show, but don't take part. The ones who know what is behind the glitter.
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"He thinkin' about his chica again, he smiling."
"So, you tell us about this girl." Irina lights another cigarette from the smouldering end of the one she drops, fans the smoke away. "She is beautiful?"
"Oh, yes." And he knows he's got a silly grin on his face.
But Lisbon is beautiful. There's no reason to think twice about that. Lovely even when she's mad at him, which is rather too often. Knows that he provokes her sometimes just to see that flush of temper, spark in her eyes. It's preferable to the look of disappointment, the worry, the pity.
"You sit here, play cards with us, when you have a woman like that?"
Because he doesn't have a woman like that. He has a beautiful co-worker, who makes it very clear that she's his boss.
So he shrugs, gives a twisted smile. Chavez snorts.
"Why she even put up with a crazy no-good brujo like you?"
"I have no idea." He says, honestly.
"It's the hair." Freddo runs his fingers over his own immaculate black waves. "The ladies love good hair."
Rude laughter, and even Merv grins. Freddo isn't bothered about women.
But they get to teasing Freddo about this hard-bodied dancer he's been chasing, and then the night manager Mr Franklin calls down to tell Merv that room 413 has blocked the toilet again, and the conversation drifts away. Jane sighs gently, his eyes only half on his cards.
He's afraid. He's afraid that what she feels for him is merely pity and friendly concern, the compassion she has for anyone in trouble. Oh, she finds him attractive, but that is something he has always used, his looks are part of his arsenal of charm, not him, as he is. And he isn't sure she could even like the real him. He's not sure he likes the real him. Arrogant, brash, conceited, deceitful, egotistical...he can run through most of the alphabet and back on his flaws.
He's nearly forty years old, and he has no real home, no family and a dreadful past, on so many levels. The last people who loved him, he failed so badly that he's terrified, and he's filled the hollow inside him with rage, to bury the grief. And guilt crushes the tiny part of him that longs to be held, to be touched. To be with her. Because he doesn't deserve her. He'll only make a mess of it.
Sometimes, you just have to play the hand you get dealt. And tonight, that feels like a busted flush.