Nick's face couldn't get any uglier. He flipped his cards over: [A♥ K♥] for ace high. Joey flipped over his 9s and won the pot.

'Strike 3. You're out.'

After losing the hand, Nick got up from the table, put on his jacket, and left. You had to hand it to him. As annoying as he was, he still knew how to lose and when to quit. Joey's stack was up to 4000 now. His winnings more than made up for the 1000 he had lost early on. However, his eyes were drooping. He'd been playing for multiple hours now. 'It's time to call it a day.'

He cashed out and said goodbye to Andrew.  This time he called a taxi because if he went by foot, he didn't know if his eyes would stay open before arriving home.

***

After school the next day, Joey was back to work at Angelo's. When looking at Angelo's club and comparing it to Pocket Rockets, he had to admit it wasn't in the same league, but this place had its own charm.

At that moment, he looked across the room to see Amy and Anwar. Anwar was doing pushups while Amy was keeping count for him.

"Do you want to live forever, maggot?!?" She yelled as she put her foot on Anwar's back to add pressure. Anwar's face was sweating, his eyes bloodshot, and his mouth gasping as if making tiny screams. He was tired, but more than anything, he was afraid.

"If you don't die, you don't stop!" Amy continued with her "motivational speech," as she went over to the snacks area. She grabbed a styrofoam cup, poured in some Pepsi, and topped it off with some random white powder she pulled out of her sweatshirt pocket. Then she went over to Anwar and allowed him to take a break. Before he could rest, she forced him to drink the cup as she pushed it up from the bottom, effectively waterboarding him.

'This isn't a part of the charm...' Joey thought. 'This girl's like the Bill Cosby of the poker room,' he shivered and reminded himself to never take a drink from Amy.

Not long after, players started to come in and a game started. Hours passed as Joey and the other dealers alternated their shifts. At one point in a hand, Joey found himself dealing a session when a hand that caught his attention occurred. Joey was starting to recognize some of the players here, but in this hand, he only recognized the regular Devon.

"I'm all in," one player said.

"Alright, I call. Come on, what do you got?" Devon asked.

The man flipped over his hand. He had caught two pair on the river, beating Devon's pocket aces. What interested Joey was not the hand but Devon's reaction to the loss. Sweat glistened on his cheeks. He held the two cards in his hand and stared at them blankly. As each second went by, his gaze became more and more distant, as if he was witnessing something precious drift away from him, or perhaps he was the one fading away.

Devon hung his head, put the cards on the table down gently, and sat motionless in his seat for minutes. Finally, a long time later, he got up to go to the snacks table, poured himself some water, and sat down on an empty chair. Joey looked over to notice his hand with the water was shaking.

Soon, Joey's dealing session ended. He went over to speak with Amy. "What's wrong with Devon?" he asked. For once she didn't launch into a nonsensical tirade. Instead, her eyes showed hints of compassion. "He's not doing well...He's ran into some financial difficulties."

"What do you mean?"

"Devon's always been a pretty decent at poker, a winning player, but some time back he developed a hobby for playing...other games."

"What games?"

"Blackjack, roulette, baccarat, you name it."

"How are those different from poker?"

"There's a big difference. In poker, you play against other players. That's why you can win. It's a skill game. In those other games, you play against the house. And the house...never loses. While poker is considered gambling by some, it's really in a unique category from all the other games you find in a casino. Those other games, they'll just steal everything from you."

"So what happened to Devon?"

"He wasn't satisfied with being a modest winner in poker. Once he started gambling for real, it quickly became a whirlpool for him. He became addicted to the action of big risk and now...you can say he's lost everything."

"Everything?"

"He lost his son's college savings. When his wife found that out, she left him. Right now, he also owes money to people around town."

Joey sighed. This was a side of this world that he hadn't seen yet. "Thanks for the information," he told Amy.

"No problem. Hey, you want a drink?" She held up a Pepsi for him. He looked over at Anwar and found him laid out on the sofa, foaming at the mouth. Joey gulped. "No thank you..." he said as he slowly walked away from this future felon.

Joey walked into Angelo's office and took a seat. Angelo was leaning back in his chair rubbing his temples, apparently taking a break from reading. There was a book lying on his desk. 'Hmm...I didn't know he was the reading type.' Joey looked over at the book's cover.

"Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal," by Joel Salatin.

When Angelo saw this book title while passing by a book store, he thought he may have finally found a kindred soul, someone who understood him and his difficulties. He bought the book without hesitation. It was only when he got to work and opened the pages that he realized it was some farmer's tale about the food industry. 'Angelo...you're good by yourself, you don't need friends, you got this!' he said to himself as he rubbed his head.

He opened his eyes to see Joey staring at him with a strange face. 'I know that look. I give that look to people all the time! He's looking at me like I'm trash!'

"What do you want?" Angelo asked.

"Angelo, you know anything about Devon out there? I just heard something and I felt kind of bad, I thought maybe I could help him out somehow," Joey said.

"Help out?" Angelo sneered.

Joey frowned. "What's the matter?"

"Kid, you know what's the first thing a drowning person does?"

"...What?"

"They grab onto the first person they see and pull em' under the water so they can climb their back to get one tiny breath of air."

...

"Let's say you give that mope some money. You know what he's gonna do with it? He's gonna to go to the nearest gambling den and lose it all. You know why? Cause in his mind, all he sees is everything he had before. All he sees is himself on top, and he ain't gonna stop until he gets it all back or he's got nothin' left to gamble. That's how the mind of an addicted gambler works. In all the years I've been around, I ain't never seen it go no other way."

Joey had his head down, looking at the ground, thinking.

"You know kid...I ain't got no Harvard degree or nothin', but I know one thing. In this world, there ain't no helping a man that ain't willing to help himself. Once somebody gets a taste of the wrong thing, there ain't nothin' nobody but them can do about it."

Joey thought about it. 'He's right...'  He looked left to see Devon still sitting there on that chair, gazing at nothing at all.

Joey's eyes gained a little maturity as he thought to himself, 'In the end, no one can save you but yourself.'