Pickle Poker

It had been three days since called Jerome.

"You can not ignore this, Luke." Jordan sat next to me in a booth in a grocery store on 7th Avenue.

I took a piece of my dill pickle.

"He might think you're coming, already started even. You can not leave me wondering, Luke. You can not."

I remember she was helping, or at least try to.

"I'm sorry. I know that's your thing. I just want to help. "She began airing a second layer of cream cheese on her bagel onion.

"I know you do." I finished my pickle. "I must remind you, at least to tell him that I can not do. It's the right thing to do. "

"You're serious?"

"Sure."

"You're not going to get your father, you're not interested?

Curious? He could be alive somewhere. It may feel like. "

"Jordy, it was my cell. He had to call."

"Unless he's in trouble."

I shook my empty soda cup and reached around to grasp his ¬.

"Luke, you're right, it's not my business. I'm sorry to keep pushing. "

I drank his soda up the straw pulled up the final drops noisy. "I just ... I do not know what I'm going to win an expedition. If he was in New Orleans when the storm hit, and if his friends have not seen or heard of him, he is probably gone. And I'm OK with that. I know that his heart was good, even though we lost touch. There was no malice between us last time we talked. no regrets. "I said the words, hoping they'd feel real. They did not.

"So I support you. Whatever is best for you. I'm all in."

***

All in. I remember the first time I heard Dad say these words. Kaiser dad's friend suggested a poker night during the holidays of the year grandmother died. He was presented with five or six guys from the company and a new card game of Caesars Palace, he picked up on a business trip to Las Vegas. That first night they sat around a table drinking beer in the basement and play Texas Hold'em. I had to be glued to a film about the father of the huge rear projection TV was purchased, but the poker strategies and fascinated me. Probably more than that, I just wanted to hear dad laugh.

That night became the first nights of poker. It did not take long at all for Dad to buy a real poker table. He also purchased a special table for the cashier, poker chips real dealer stupid visor, and a safe costly to put money in.

He said it was not complete until he built the bar in the basement to go with it.

Sometimes I watched. Sometimes, my father had his guys playing a round with the pretzel sticks if I could sit in. Mama does not seem to mind when I asked her what she thought of him. She did not mind much of anything.

Dad's group played every Friday night. And while Dad does not always win, they always played in his basement where he can keep an eye on mom and be there if she needed him.

Dad was only during the last year of mom, but it was also resolved that she had to survive and to break his addiction. He prayed for her because she mixed in a slow circuit of the bed to the refrigerator on the couch in the lounge to the medicine cabinet and go back to bed. He prayed she would feel better, sleep better, be in a better mood when she woke from his day NAP. He asked his mood swings would be facilitated.

He prayed he could save her.

Unfortunately, I do not think that Mom never understood how lonely Dad had become without her.

On rare occasions, the mother could be discussed in a meal or a Sunday drive, but I think she has done to appease us more chance to breathe fresh air or remember what looked like Fort Worth. We have dragged him to a pair of Dallas Mavericks basketball to the Games did not pretend to e.