Thursday, September 27, 2007

Chapter 17

Jaime woke early having tossed and turned the whole night. Groaning he got out of bed and into the shower hoping maybe it would clear his head. More and more he wondered if he had done the right thing by staying at the tournament when he found out Tricia was indeed there. He’d told himself that he was a professional now and had to act like one. None of that was helping much though and he was becoming enough of a mess emotionally that he feared it would begin to affect his play.

Partially dressed after his shower he decided he had to try talking to somebody about it and the only person he knew well enough that was here and not involved was Kevin James, his friend and sometimes mentor. Jaime dialed Kevin’s cell number and when Kevin answered, wide awake to Jaime’s relief, he asked if they could get some time to talk. Knowing Kevin was playing the day’s event he suggested later that night. Kevin told Jaime to meet him outside the buffet at the casino in fifteen minutes.

It was more like 25 minutes before Jaime could finish getting dressed, drive to the casino from his hotel several miles away and make his way to the buffet. Kevin was waiting for him. Jaime couldn’t tell what Kevin thought of him being late but apologized and explained anyway.

“And whose fault is it that you didn’t stay in the perfectly nice room that we’d have gotten you here in this hotel as part of your sponsorship deal?” Kevin asked, a wry smile on his face.

“That’s part of what I need to talk about,” Jaime said.

“Well by all means lets go stuff our faces while you unburden yourself.” Kevin was smiling as he motioned Jaime ahead of him toward the buffet entrance.

As they got their breakfast Jaime spent a little time studying Kevin. To Jaime he somehow just looked like a professional poker player. When Jaime wore the same black shirt and black pants that was practically the standard uniform for all the players sponsored bythe same internet site he felt he looked like an imposter or a copy cat. Kevin was probably over a decade younger than Jaime putting him in his mid 30’s. He was tall and trim and had good looks that turned women’s heads when he walked by. He was also very bright and intense and could be very intimidating to play against. Over the course of the last year or so they’d become surprisingly good friends and had even shared rooms on a couple of trips to defray their expenses.

“So what’s on your mind Jaime?” Kevin asked once they had begun eating. “I was a little worried the other day. You seemed very distracted before you started but you did very well. Fourth was great and if not for a couple of nasty suckouts you could have won the whole thing.”

“It’s a long story,” Jaime said, suddenly unsure he wanted to talk about it, unsure how Kevin would take it.

“Well the best way to tell a long story is to start at the beginning and talk until you are done,” Kevin said, quoting something that Jaime thought sounded familiar but that he could not place.

He chuckled and then said, “Well the beginning I guess is when I met Tricia online almost nine years ago now.”

“Tricia is, I take it, the good looking lady who was watching you so avidly at the final table? She is not then, just one of your groupies?”

Jaime laughed. “I don’t have groupies. That is you Kevin. Yes that was Tricia.”

“Go on then, there does seem to be some kind of story there considering just what I saw there.”

“Well we had an affair, the details of which don’t really matter to this. The thing is we quickly got caught by her husband. We’d always said to each other than we loved our spouses and had no intention of leaving them but had a void we needed filled. That was going fine until we got caught. The long and short of it is that she went back to her husband and vowed to make her marriage work. She said she needed to sever all contact with me to do that and I agreed to that.”

“Well obviously that vow has been broken,” Kevin said. “Did you know she would be here? Did she come because you were going to be here?”

“I happened onto a screen name that HAD to be her on the site playing in little tournaments. I kind of lurked around the edges and figured out that it was her. Then I happened to be playing a qualifier to the big Sunday tournament and ended up on the same table with her and she was discussing coming to play these tournaments. So I knew she planned to be here.”

“Ok,” Kevin said.

“I swear I didn’t plan to be here because of her.” Jaime said. “I hope you don’t think I did.”

Kevin smiled. “I thought you planned to be here because we agreed to pay for it because you’re a good player. What you do with your personal life is pretty much up to you Jaime. Hell I’m younger than you and have been divorced twice. You’ve been married forever. Who would I be to tell you how to do things. Maybe I should have tried what you did rather than just getting divorced.”

Jaime looked at Kevin trying to decide if he was kidding or not. It was sometimes hard to tell. “Maybe I should have just gotten divorced when I was so unhappy. But I didn’t and I don’t want to because overall I’m not that unhappy. I’m just selfish I guess and want something more. The problem is that right now I don’t know what I want.”

“I don’t want to be the cause of Tricia’s marriage failing after she worked so hard to make it work all these years. She’s even got a young son now. I just don’t think I could do that.”

“But you still feel an attraction for her obviously.”

Jaime shrugged and nodded. “More thanIwould have thought possible. I told myself all these years that it had been a relatively short, intense time in our lives when we were both vulnerable. That if we met again there would be no spark. At best we’d be just friends. That doesn’t seem to be the case for either of us.”

“Well maybe you should just do what feels good but be more careful this time. I take it her family is not here with her?”

Jaime shook his head.

“Well then why not go for it?” Kevin asked.

“I made a promise to her years ago that I’d never do anything that might harm her marriage when I promised to sever all contact. Besides it gets more complicated in that I’m sort of seeing somebody else right now.”

“Oh,” Kevin said. “Well I have to commend your loyalty but I can see how it’s a flaming pain in the ass. I’m not sure what to tell you. I know what I’d do but remember I’ve been divorced twice. Obviously I am not good at relationships.”

“I thought about going home when I found out she was here.” Jaime admitted.

Kevin’s face clouded. “That would not have been a good choice. You’ve got an obligation to us to you know. For that matter you’ve got an obligation to yourself. You’re here to play poker. So far you’ve done that very well. You’re going to have to learn not to let external pressures screw with your mind. That is what separates a lot of the truly successful pros from the ones who are just a flash in the pan. I think you have what it takes to make it long term.”

“In the end I didn’t leave because I knew I had an obligation to you.”

Kevin shrugged. “Yeah. But Jaime it seems to me you need to think of what you want. When I met you I liked the way you were driven to succeed at poker. I’ve never seen anyone study so hard or so intensely. You’reat the start of something that can be really great for you. You need to find a way to put the other stuff on the back burner for the time being. At least do that as much as possible.”

“Yeah I know.”

“I guess I’m not really helping am I?”

“More than you know,” Jaime admitted. “You reminded me that right now in my life, at least in this place and time, poker, this tournament series, is the most important thing in my life. It’s two weeks out of my life that I need to focus as much as possible on this dream, this goal.”

“You can’t totally fuck up the rest of your life over it though,” Kevin pointed out. “I guess it won’t effect your home life with your wife. She seems happy to have you come play these tournaments and do your road trips. I had been unaware of anything else in your life. I never even saw you flirt with pretty girls at the table or waitresses or anything. Now maybe I know why.”

“It would have been a lot easier if Tricia had not turned out to get into poker and in a sort of back door way that is my fault too.”

“You weren’t playing eight or nine years ago,” Kevin pointed out. “How the hell is it your fault that somebody you’ve had no contact with for that long decided to play poker and got good enough to play here. She is good enough I suppose?”

“Turns out she is very good. She doesn’t even know how good yet.” Jaime said somewhat proudly. “You know I’ve got that online journal?”

Kevin nodded.

“Well she has been reading it and that gave her the idea to try poker.”

“Shit Jaime, you’re not going to try to say that it’s your fault that she picked up poker because you talked about it in your journal and then came to this tournament? Did she come to play poker or to see you? She must have known you’d be here.”

“She says she came to play.” Jaime said, then he explained about sending the card to her hoping to warn her that he’d be there.

“Well then it seems to me that you two need to either put your personal feelings aside and play poker or you need to sleep with her and get it over with.” Kevin said. Then with a smile he added. “I would opt to sleep with her and get it out of my system. Hell maybe you’ll be able to help each other with poker. You could just have a sort of relationship where you just have a fling at every circuit event or whatever.”

Jaime looked at Kevin and then said. “I never can tell when you’re kidding.”

“I don’t know that I was kidding.” Kevin said with a shrug. “Hell it sounds great to me. A steady girlfriend you see only at poker tournaments. These things are a hell of a grind. That would be a good way to spend the downtime and she even understands what you have to go through.”

“I can’t see that working.” Jaime said, at the same time wondering if it could.

“Well then I don’t know what else to tell you other than that you’re going to have to deal with a lot of shit as you become more and more successful in this. Wait until you start to get endorsement deals. Then the shit gets deep.”

Jaime laughed. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get to that point.”

“Never say never my friend,” Kevin said. “I don’t know if this helped or not but I need to get going. I’m playing today.”

“So is Tricia.”

“Want me to knock her out so you can console her?” Kevin asked with a mock leer on his face.

Jaime laughed. “No. I hope she knocks your ass out.”

Kevin smiled. “Well at least you seem to be in a better mood now.”

“It helped to talk about it,” Jaime assured him. “If nothing else I remembered why I’m really here.”

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