fic, Lost: I've Been Everywhere 12/14 (Sawyer, Jack, ensemble), PG13
By the way: this is the last really gen one. Slashing somehow begins next chapter.
Title: I've Been Everywhere 12/14
Rating: PG-13, will reach NC17 overall
Characters for this part: Sawyer, Jack, Hurley, Ben, Locke, Danielle.
Word counting: 3658 this part, 50000 ca overall.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and all the folk songs used here are not mine. The places really exist and I've never been there.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl, Jack a former doctor from L.A. traveling with him.
Thanks to: elliotsmelliot for the great beta job for which I can't be grateful enough and to fosfomifira for the title. I'd still be searching for one otherwise.
A/N: The song referenced in the beginning and the end is Do Re Mi by Woody Guthrie (you can also find an excellent John Mellencamp cover).
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XIII, Part XIV
11. California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see
The weather is warm in Monterey when they get off the Greyhound; Jack figures that Sawyer’s back hurts, from the way he’s moving. He’s probably having a problem with carrying the guitar on his right shoulder instead of the left one, even if Jack could bet that he won’t ever admit it. Jack also figures that he’s itching to play his stuff, but at least for now the money issue is taken care of and they won’t risk starving anytime soon.
He will be honest; he had missed California. Not Los Angeles especially, it’d take a while to make him miss it, but he had missed the warm weather even if they’re still in February, and he had missed seeing some green around instead of no-man’s-land covered in red dust.
He knows that if he went a bit south or a bit north things would indeed change; he has made his job of that for too long to ignore it, but for now he just shakes his head and ignores the voice inside his head that tells him to take his own responsibilities.
“Looks like the garden of Eden when you arrive,” Sawyer remarks more to himself than to him as he comes closer. “I always tend to forget it when I ain’t here.”
“Well, it looks like it.”
“Yeah, and believe it or not, you won’t find it here so hot it you ain’t got the do re mi...”
“You really can’t spend a day without singing, can you?”
“Nope. Six years is a hard habit to break. So, you wanna go? It ain’t much far.”
“Sure, lead the way.”
It isn’t much far at all; it’s barely ten minutes from the bus station and it’s so different from the gambling house in Reno. It still has two floors but it’s smaller, looks like a place you’d want to bring your kids to with its clean, white face. The sign reads Reyes’; there’s some loud chattering coming from the inside.
“As usual,” Sawyer mutters before climbing up on the porch and opening the door. Jack follows him in; there’s just a big room in here, too. Three or four slot machines are against the right side of the room, there’s one roulette and about four tables. He can distinguish people playing blackjack in one and poker in another, but then his attention gets distracted by a bald man in a wheelchair that is more or less alone on the opposite corner of the room and is apparently playing backgammon with a book in his hand. Jack remembers some guy he knew at the hospital who had this thing for re-playing famous chess matches on his own, even if he didn’t have an idea that there could be recorded backgammon games. But well, what does he know?
Sawyer turns to this kid who has been running around in circles serving coffee and stops him in the middle of the way.
“Hey, you work here?”
The kid nods, kind of distrustful.
“Is your boss ‘round the place?”
“Sure, he’s upstairs.”
“Fine. Listen, could you give him a call when you’re done?”
“Who should I say it is?”
“Sawyer. And don’t make me wait a century.”
The kid brings the coffee to the blackjack table and reluctantly goes up to the second floor. But meanwhile, the bald guy has noticed them, or at least Jack figures he has noticed Sawyer, because he sort of waves at him and Sawyer looks at Jack first and goes in the man’s direction. Jack shrugs and tags along.
“You still ain’t sick of that stuff?”
“No, James, and anyway, nice to see you here for a change.”
Sawyer rolls his eyes, but he’s biting his lip; Jack wonders whether this fact that someone calls him James bothers him or doesn’t.
“Well, I had stuff to do. You ain’t doin’ so bad, from what I see.”
“Yeah, and I’m figuring that for the first time that you don’t come here alone you don’t even introduce your friend there.”
Sawyer half fakes a bow and gets out of the way; Jack just shakes his head and steps forward to shake the man’s hand.
“Jack Shephard. Nice to meet you.”
“John Locke, nice to meet you, too. I just hope you don’t dislike backgammon as much as he does.”
“Oh, I just prefer other games.”
“Damn straight. And he won’t even tell me how the hell does he manage to win at roulette.”
“Maybe he just thinks you wouldn’t understand it.”
“What?”
“Well, I tried to explain to you how to play backgammon and you never got it.”
“But...”
Jack chuckles lightly, figuring that this Locke person has a point in all of this, when he hears someone cursing from the other side of the room; he turns in time to see a man throwing his cards on the poker table and leaving in a storm.
“What the hell’s goin’ on down there? I never saw anyone gettin’ angry in this place.”
Locke sighs and closes the backgammon book, then rolls the chair a bit away from his table.
“It’s the guy that is giving you the shoulders now, the short one. Came here a month ago or so and I don’t know what it is with him but he has never lost a game and I don’t think I’ve ever seen people betting so much money than when they bet against him. Our friend the owner is sure that he cheats someway, but no one ever caught him.”
“Really. And how is our champion called?”
“Ben something. A short surname. With an L or something.”
Jack suddenly gets a flash and turns to Locke, eyes wide in disbelief.
“Could that be Benjamin Linus?”
Locke thinks about it for a second, then nods.
“Could be.”
“So what I’m not seeing right now because he gives me the shoulder is a short guy, not much hair, pretty thin, big eyes and sort of creepy stare?”
“And how is it that you’re so accurate?”
“Because he was my patient for a while. Probably. Well, I’ll just go have a look.”
Jack leaves them there and goes to the other side of the room, trying to pass as unnoticed as possible; but no such luck. Their player raises his head and looks straight at him and dammit, it is just his old patient. It doesn’t help that while he was, Jack had always hoped to be through with him as soon as possible because just even looking at that man made him feel uncomfortable. Ben raises an eyebrow in his direction, smiling just a bit, his eyes fixed on Jack; Jack just raises his hand awkwardly and then heads back to the other side of the room.
Damn, he had thought that Locke was a bit creepy before Sawyer introduced them, but in comparison to that man? Jack had thought he had exaggerated the impression when Ben was gone from his life, maybe he just remembered wrong, but well, looks like he didn’t. He’s back to the other side of the room just in time to witness Sawyer getting hugged and almost thrown on the floor or something by this heavy man in a suit who looks pretty much overjoyed to see him. He catches Sawyer telling him something like ‘good to see you, too’ before he comes nearer and gets properly introduced to Hugo Reyes, otherwise known as Hurley, owner of the house and kind of desperate in regards to Jack’s former patient.
“So, the guy’s that bad.”
“Totally, dude, totally. He’s, like... no one wins anything at poker anymore when he’s here. And he’s pretty much always here. And it’s not like its good, y’know? Because I always figured I should put some rule that said that you can’t bet more than something, you know, so that no one gets too dissatisfied, but since he’s been here... dude, it’s terrible. But it’s not like I can kick him out.”
“I guess not,” Jack answers as he watches another player leaving the table, slamming his cards down as he departs.
“Sawyer here said you know him?”
“Well, I... cured him for a month or something in ’27 or ’28. It wasn’t anything special, there were complications regarding something with his back because my colleague treating him had something wrong. Nothing life threatening, but I treated him and once he recovered, I operated on him again. It went fine and I haven’t seen him since until now. He was just... well, I just felt uncomfortable being around him, both professionally and personally.”
“Hey, what’s goin’ on? Is he playin’ with a woman now?”
Jack has a better look; and well, yeah, the only one remaining at the table right now is a woman. Kind of strange looking, if you ask him. He turns to Hurley, figuring that his expression is giving him away.
“Well, whoever wants to come here comes. I don’t have problems with women. But dude, that girl? Shouldn’t really do that.”
“Why?”
“’Cause she got a daughter and while she has a job she can’t afford to...”
The woman slams the cards on the table, too, and a strangled mon dieu comes out of her lips. Jack notices Sawyer tensing on the spot and going straight to the table.
“... lose money. Dude, where are you going?”
Sawyer is at the table in barely fifteen seconds and looks at the woman, recognition appearing all over his eyes. Jack desperately tries to remember if Sawyer has ever told him about any French woman and then he realizes that he had said something about this Danielle person who was the subject of his first folk music stealing. Could she be that one?
“Fuck, is that you?” Sawyer asks blinking; the woman looks at him for a second, then gasps putting a hand over her mouth. Jack comes closer. She’s pretty tall, with long unruly brown hair, wears jeans and a man’s shirt; her cheeks are deep with lines, even though the fact that she doesn’t have a white hair makes her look way younger than she probably is.
“You are the musician who gave me money at the rest stop?” she asks then, her voice thin and low, her accent definitely French.
“Well, if you’re the Danielle woman with the Alex girl, then that’s me. The fuck are you doing playing poker?”
She half smiles and shrugs.
“Well, I did find a job and it doesn’t pay that bad, but sometimes I come here and I always go home with more money than I had at first. Looks like today isn’t my day.” She bites her lip and Jack figures things aren’t as fine as she’s trying to making them seem. Sawyer must have figured it, too, because he whispers how much and Jack doesn’t hear the sum but the look on Sawyer’s face doesn’t say anything positive.
“Fuck, that’s too much!”
“I know. Guess I’ll try to save as much as I can. I can do that. Well, it’s been a pleasure to see you again.”
She shakes Sawyer’s hand and goes towards the exit without even a glance back; Jack comes closer to Sawyer.
“You said she has a daughter?”
“Damn straight.”
“How old?”
“First and last time I saw her, ‘twas in ’31. Was barely twelve, but probably less.”
“Stop her.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Well, you have the back up money or what?”
Jack winks then and Sawyer understands what he has in mind; he surprisingly doesn’t try to stop him.
“Well, then kick his fucking ass,” he whispers before running out to fetch Danielle. Jack then turns to Ben, who is counting his money, and comes closer.
“Mr. Linus. I see that you are doing well.”
He gets the enigmatic smile in return. Of course he has recognized him on the spot.
“Definitely, Doctor Shephard. It surprises me to find you here of any place, though.”
“Well, you can never know.”
“You know, losing you was a pity.”
“At the hospital, you mean? Well, I had better occupations.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that. People talked about that, a lot.”
“Well, that was my choice. As I guess it’s your choice to make money this way?”
“Oh, I don’t really need it, Doctor Shephard.”
“And then why?”
Ben shrugs and smiles in that sinister way again.
“Nothing better to pass the time.”
By this point, Jack has decided. He has a problem here. A real problem. And anyway, he never could stand the creep’s face.
“Then you wouldn’t mind a short game, would you?”
A glint appears for a second in Ben’s large eyes, even if it’s gone in a second.
“I certainly would not. Please have a seat, I’d be delighted.”
Jack sits and casts a glance around. There’s Sawyer watching him, the French woman near him looking not too convinced; Hurley stands on Sawyer’s other side, while Locke has turned the wheelchair from his table and joined them, staying a bit behind them but in an excellent position to watch what’s going on.
He overhears Sawyer whispering to Danielle something like don’t worry, the guy’s not bluffing. He tries not to laugh.
See, Jack won’t ever, ever tell Sawyer or anyone because he just doesn’t talk about his old man to anyone as a rule, but before they found him dead in some alley in Salinas some fifteen years ago with a suspiciously empty bottle of whisky by his body, he had a thing for gambling that was second just to the thing he had for drinking.
Jack had always figured it was because he had so much money that he could stand to lose it, since his old man never was any good at anything that required strategy even if he was a good doctor. But he used to bring Jack with him, at least for some time; and while people at gambling houses liked his old man mainly because it was easy to win anything when he was playing and he didn’t mind if he lost, some of those people had liked Jack genuinely. And when you spend four years, from thirteen to seventeen, following your old man in various gambling houses and there spending your time getting taught how to really gamble (he remembers one guy saying he was going to tell him how to win at the roulette so that he didn’t become like his old man after and he hadn’t had the courage to refuse), then you can afford to play once in a while. It’s not that he likes it. He just knows how to do it and once in a while it comes handy, especially right now. He sees that Ben is using a stacked deck from a mile away seeing how he’s folding, and while he knows he could overcome the problem, he decides that he wants to set the mood.
“Mr. Linus, is that deck from the house?”
“No, it’s mine. But no one has had problems using it before.”
“Oh, that really isn’t a problem. I just wanted to know. Well, are we doing it the classic way or the Hold ‘Em way?”
“I personally prefer the classic way myself, but your pick.”
“Classic is fine. Do we have a minimum bet?”
“What about five dollars?”
“Five dollars it is. Then I’m ready.”
Jack cuts the deck, knowing that his cards won’t be good; but he doesn’t really care, he just wants to see exactly how Ben is cheating. It’s not like he doesn’t know at least fifteen ways to cheat in a poker game anyway.
He gets a couple of nines and when he changes one card he comes up with another couple of eights; he isn’t surprised when Ben takes his five dollars with a four of a kind of queens. But none of the four queens is the first card; Jack figures that they were already set and he just did like one guy who cheated his old man once and dealt himself four cards he already had positioned.
Well, fine.
He receives the deck from Ben and he notices that there are some cards just slightly shorter than the others as soon as he starts to fold; fine again, he thinks as Ben cuts. Then he deals, alright, but he grabs it with his index finger and he doesn’t let his features change as he sees Ben’s small gasp; sure, it is a trick and it is a cheat and now he’s dealing the cards looking at them first, but he figures that Ben has understood that if he calls Jack on his cheating, Jack will call him on his own.
Jack wins the hand with a full house and Ben fumes as Jack receives the forty dollars he gained (he bet twenty and Ben had to meet it).
Then Ben looks straight at him and Jack swallows. Fuck, that stare sure creeps the hell out of him still.
“So, doctor, it looks like we both know what we’re up to. Right?”
“Pretty much. And that’s why I have a proposition.”
“What?”
“I have fifty dollars now, and your forty here. I’ll be glad to bet it all on a final hand, if you bet the same, if we play it with the house’s deck and if my friend there deals us the cards. What about it?”
Ben’s pale skin looks paler for a second, but then he nods, his lips stretched in a thin line.
“Fine. Mr. Reyes, would you be so kind to provide us with a new deck of cards?”
Hurley nods and runs to get them, while Jack turns towards Sawyer.
“Sawyer, would you mind dealing us the cards?”
“Yeah, sure, but...”
“Then take that one and do it.”
Sawyer takes the deck from Hurley and starts to shuffle. Jack is sure that it’s clean just by looking at it and is pretty sure that Sawyer doesn’t even know the ABC’s of proper poker cheating; he knows that Ben probably has another deck hidden, but he’ll think about it later. They have Locke cutting and then Jack gets served and bites his tongue in order not to smile behind his cards. Now these are good, if only he has a bit of luck. Ben changes two cards, he changes one.
Then he pushes a bundle of money in the center of the table.
“Well, that’s it. Ninety dollars.”
Ben pushes another bundle of money himself.
“There’s ninety. And I am really sad for you right now.”
“Really. Why?”
Ben smiles again that unsettling smile of his and lays a neat poker of tens with an ace of hearts standing near it.
“What do you have?”
“Nothing you will like.”
Then Jack lays down his royal flush of spades, including a ten. Five tens appear over the table and now that is really, really wrong. Ben becomes even paler and Jack stops him before he can start to speak.
“See, I’m sure you could say that I cheated, since one of us has to have cheated. But I could tell you that the ten was the card I received earlier and you couldn’t prove me wrong, could you? Also, who knows what’s hidden in that left sleeve of yours, since I couldn’t see it for some five seconds while he was dealing the second round of cards? So, since I have technically won this round, I’d say you let me have the money, we’ll ignore that fifth ten and you won’t come around these parts for a while. A long while. What do you say, Mr. Linus?”
Ben stands up, takes his coat, casts Jack an icy glance and slams the door as he gets out. Jack hasn’t managed to take his money back from the table when Sawyer’s hand lands on his shoulder, shaking it.
“Damn it, that was some fine job.”
“I had fine teachers.”
He gives Danielle all of Ben’s money then; it’s not only that she was robbed of hers, for how much it could be, but he just doesn’t want the man’s money. And then Hurley’s hand is on his shoulder too and Jack feels like it might indeed get dislocated.
“Dude, that was... so great that I need to offer you lunch at least.”
That’s how they all end up in a nearby small restaurant eating the nicest dinner they had in a while; it’s him, Sawyer, Hurley, Locke, Danielle and Alex, who is a tall and thin young woman, probably sixteen or so, who actually looks way healthier than Sawyer keeps on saying he remembered her. Danielle tells him that she found this rich woman who needed two maids and didn’t care about the origin or the age as long as they worked hard. They did and so also managed two full meals each day.
“But at the beginning it was horrible,” Danielle remarks as she eats.
“Working camps?”
“Camps? We picked fruit. I swear, this is such a nice place, it’s green and the weather is so good and it’s just so nice, but as long as you don’t have time to sit down with something to eat every day, you just don’t notice it. I thought we should’ve gone back more than once.”
Jack then feels Sawyer’s elbow in his hip.
“What’s that?”
“Told you this mornin’. See why folk music is always ahead of the times? Or on par, at least.”
“What, that thing you were singing this morning?”
“Sure. California’s the garden of Eden, a paradise to live in and see, but believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot if you ain’t got the do re mi. And I don’t mean music by that. And I’m sure you know it way too well.”
Nothing to say about it; Jack knows it way too well indeed.
TBC
Title: I've Been Everywhere 12/14
Rating: PG-13, will reach NC17 overall
Characters for this part: Sawyer, Jack, Hurley, Ben, Locke, Danielle.
Word counting: 3658 this part, 50000 ca overall.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and all the folk songs used here are not mine. The places really exist and I've never been there.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl, Jack a former doctor from L.A. traveling with him.
Thanks to: elliotsmelliot for the great beta job for which I can't be grateful enough and to fosfomifira for the title. I'd still be searching for one otherwise.
A/N: The song referenced in the beginning and the end is Do Re Mi by Woody Guthrie (you can also find an excellent John Mellencamp cover).
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XIII, Part XIV
11. California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see
The weather is warm in Monterey when they get off the Greyhound; Jack figures that Sawyer’s back hurts, from the way he’s moving. He’s probably having a problem with carrying the guitar on his right shoulder instead of the left one, even if Jack could bet that he won’t ever admit it. Jack also figures that he’s itching to play his stuff, but at least for now the money issue is taken care of and they won’t risk starving anytime soon.
He will be honest; he had missed California. Not Los Angeles especially, it’d take a while to make him miss it, but he had missed the warm weather even if they’re still in February, and he had missed seeing some green around instead of no-man’s-land covered in red dust.
He knows that if he went a bit south or a bit north things would indeed change; he has made his job of that for too long to ignore it, but for now he just shakes his head and ignores the voice inside his head that tells him to take his own responsibilities.
“Looks like the garden of Eden when you arrive,” Sawyer remarks more to himself than to him as he comes closer. “I always tend to forget it when I ain’t here.”
“Well, it looks like it.”
“Yeah, and believe it or not, you won’t find it here so hot it you ain’t got the do re mi...”
“You really can’t spend a day without singing, can you?”
“Nope. Six years is a hard habit to break. So, you wanna go? It ain’t much far.”
“Sure, lead the way.”
It isn’t much far at all; it’s barely ten minutes from the bus station and it’s so different from the gambling house in Reno. It still has two floors but it’s smaller, looks like a place you’d want to bring your kids to with its clean, white face. The sign reads Reyes’; there’s some loud chattering coming from the inside.
“As usual,” Sawyer mutters before climbing up on the porch and opening the door. Jack follows him in; there’s just a big room in here, too. Three or four slot machines are against the right side of the room, there’s one roulette and about four tables. He can distinguish people playing blackjack in one and poker in another, but then his attention gets distracted by a bald man in a wheelchair that is more or less alone on the opposite corner of the room and is apparently playing backgammon with a book in his hand. Jack remembers some guy he knew at the hospital who had this thing for re-playing famous chess matches on his own, even if he didn’t have an idea that there could be recorded backgammon games. But well, what does he know?
Sawyer turns to this kid who has been running around in circles serving coffee and stops him in the middle of the way.
“Hey, you work here?”
The kid nods, kind of distrustful.
“Is your boss ‘round the place?”
“Sure, he’s upstairs.”
“Fine. Listen, could you give him a call when you’re done?”
“Who should I say it is?”
“Sawyer. And don’t make me wait a century.”
The kid brings the coffee to the blackjack table and reluctantly goes up to the second floor. But meanwhile, the bald guy has noticed them, or at least Jack figures he has noticed Sawyer, because he sort of waves at him and Sawyer looks at Jack first and goes in the man’s direction. Jack shrugs and tags along.
“You still ain’t sick of that stuff?”
“No, James, and anyway, nice to see you here for a change.”
Sawyer rolls his eyes, but he’s biting his lip; Jack wonders whether this fact that someone calls him James bothers him or doesn’t.
“Well, I had stuff to do. You ain’t doin’ so bad, from what I see.”
“Yeah, and I’m figuring that for the first time that you don’t come here alone you don’t even introduce your friend there.”
Sawyer half fakes a bow and gets out of the way; Jack just shakes his head and steps forward to shake the man’s hand.
“Jack Shephard. Nice to meet you.”
“John Locke, nice to meet you, too. I just hope you don’t dislike backgammon as much as he does.”
“Oh, I just prefer other games.”
“Damn straight. And he won’t even tell me how the hell does he manage to win at roulette.”
“Maybe he just thinks you wouldn’t understand it.”
“What?”
“Well, I tried to explain to you how to play backgammon and you never got it.”
“But...”
Jack chuckles lightly, figuring that this Locke person has a point in all of this, when he hears someone cursing from the other side of the room; he turns in time to see a man throwing his cards on the poker table and leaving in a storm.
“What the hell’s goin’ on down there? I never saw anyone gettin’ angry in this place.”
Locke sighs and closes the backgammon book, then rolls the chair a bit away from his table.
“It’s the guy that is giving you the shoulders now, the short one. Came here a month ago or so and I don’t know what it is with him but he has never lost a game and I don’t think I’ve ever seen people betting so much money than when they bet against him. Our friend the owner is sure that he cheats someway, but no one ever caught him.”
“Really. And how is our champion called?”
“Ben something. A short surname. With an L or something.”
Jack suddenly gets a flash and turns to Locke, eyes wide in disbelief.
“Could that be Benjamin Linus?”
Locke thinks about it for a second, then nods.
“Could be.”
“So what I’m not seeing right now because he gives me the shoulder is a short guy, not much hair, pretty thin, big eyes and sort of creepy stare?”
“And how is it that you’re so accurate?”
“Because he was my patient for a while. Probably. Well, I’ll just go have a look.”
Jack leaves them there and goes to the other side of the room, trying to pass as unnoticed as possible; but no such luck. Their player raises his head and looks straight at him and dammit, it is just his old patient. It doesn’t help that while he was, Jack had always hoped to be through with him as soon as possible because just even looking at that man made him feel uncomfortable. Ben raises an eyebrow in his direction, smiling just a bit, his eyes fixed on Jack; Jack just raises his hand awkwardly and then heads back to the other side of the room.
Damn, he had thought that Locke was a bit creepy before Sawyer introduced them, but in comparison to that man? Jack had thought he had exaggerated the impression when Ben was gone from his life, maybe he just remembered wrong, but well, looks like he didn’t. He’s back to the other side of the room just in time to witness Sawyer getting hugged and almost thrown on the floor or something by this heavy man in a suit who looks pretty much overjoyed to see him. He catches Sawyer telling him something like ‘good to see you, too’ before he comes nearer and gets properly introduced to Hugo Reyes, otherwise known as Hurley, owner of the house and kind of desperate in regards to Jack’s former patient.
“So, the guy’s that bad.”
“Totally, dude, totally. He’s, like... no one wins anything at poker anymore when he’s here. And he’s pretty much always here. And it’s not like its good, y’know? Because I always figured I should put some rule that said that you can’t bet more than something, you know, so that no one gets too dissatisfied, but since he’s been here... dude, it’s terrible. But it’s not like I can kick him out.”
“I guess not,” Jack answers as he watches another player leaving the table, slamming his cards down as he departs.
“Sawyer here said you know him?”
“Well, I... cured him for a month or something in ’27 or ’28. It wasn’t anything special, there were complications regarding something with his back because my colleague treating him had something wrong. Nothing life threatening, but I treated him and once he recovered, I operated on him again. It went fine and I haven’t seen him since until now. He was just... well, I just felt uncomfortable being around him, both professionally and personally.”
“Hey, what’s goin’ on? Is he playin’ with a woman now?”
Jack has a better look; and well, yeah, the only one remaining at the table right now is a woman. Kind of strange looking, if you ask him. He turns to Hurley, figuring that his expression is giving him away.
“Well, whoever wants to come here comes. I don’t have problems with women. But dude, that girl? Shouldn’t really do that.”
“Why?”
“’Cause she got a daughter and while she has a job she can’t afford to...”
The woman slams the cards on the table, too, and a strangled mon dieu comes out of her lips. Jack notices Sawyer tensing on the spot and going straight to the table.
“... lose money. Dude, where are you going?”
Sawyer is at the table in barely fifteen seconds and looks at the woman, recognition appearing all over his eyes. Jack desperately tries to remember if Sawyer has ever told him about any French woman and then he realizes that he had said something about this Danielle person who was the subject of his first folk music stealing. Could she be that one?
“Fuck, is that you?” Sawyer asks blinking; the woman looks at him for a second, then gasps putting a hand over her mouth. Jack comes closer. She’s pretty tall, with long unruly brown hair, wears jeans and a man’s shirt; her cheeks are deep with lines, even though the fact that she doesn’t have a white hair makes her look way younger than she probably is.
“You are the musician who gave me money at the rest stop?” she asks then, her voice thin and low, her accent definitely French.
“Well, if you’re the Danielle woman with the Alex girl, then that’s me. The fuck are you doing playing poker?”
She half smiles and shrugs.
“Well, I did find a job and it doesn’t pay that bad, but sometimes I come here and I always go home with more money than I had at first. Looks like today isn’t my day.” She bites her lip and Jack figures things aren’t as fine as she’s trying to making them seem. Sawyer must have figured it, too, because he whispers how much and Jack doesn’t hear the sum but the look on Sawyer’s face doesn’t say anything positive.
“Fuck, that’s too much!”
“I know. Guess I’ll try to save as much as I can. I can do that. Well, it’s been a pleasure to see you again.”
She shakes Sawyer’s hand and goes towards the exit without even a glance back; Jack comes closer to Sawyer.
“You said she has a daughter?”
“Damn straight.”
“How old?”
“First and last time I saw her, ‘twas in ’31. Was barely twelve, but probably less.”
“Stop her.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Well, you have the back up money or what?”
Jack winks then and Sawyer understands what he has in mind; he surprisingly doesn’t try to stop him.
“Well, then kick his fucking ass,” he whispers before running out to fetch Danielle. Jack then turns to Ben, who is counting his money, and comes closer.
“Mr. Linus. I see that you are doing well.”
He gets the enigmatic smile in return. Of course he has recognized him on the spot.
“Definitely, Doctor Shephard. It surprises me to find you here of any place, though.”
“Well, you can never know.”
“You know, losing you was a pity.”
“At the hospital, you mean? Well, I had better occupations.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that. People talked about that, a lot.”
“Well, that was my choice. As I guess it’s your choice to make money this way?”
“Oh, I don’t really need it, Doctor Shephard.”
“And then why?”
Ben shrugs and smiles in that sinister way again.
“Nothing better to pass the time.”
By this point, Jack has decided. He has a problem here. A real problem. And anyway, he never could stand the creep’s face.
“Then you wouldn’t mind a short game, would you?”
A glint appears for a second in Ben’s large eyes, even if it’s gone in a second.
“I certainly would not. Please have a seat, I’d be delighted.”
Jack sits and casts a glance around. There’s Sawyer watching him, the French woman near him looking not too convinced; Hurley stands on Sawyer’s other side, while Locke has turned the wheelchair from his table and joined them, staying a bit behind them but in an excellent position to watch what’s going on.
He overhears Sawyer whispering to Danielle something like don’t worry, the guy’s not bluffing. He tries not to laugh.
See, Jack won’t ever, ever tell Sawyer or anyone because he just doesn’t talk about his old man to anyone as a rule, but before they found him dead in some alley in Salinas some fifteen years ago with a suspiciously empty bottle of whisky by his body, he had a thing for gambling that was second just to the thing he had for drinking.
Jack had always figured it was because he had so much money that he could stand to lose it, since his old man never was any good at anything that required strategy even if he was a good doctor. But he used to bring Jack with him, at least for some time; and while people at gambling houses liked his old man mainly because it was easy to win anything when he was playing and he didn’t mind if he lost, some of those people had liked Jack genuinely. And when you spend four years, from thirteen to seventeen, following your old man in various gambling houses and there spending your time getting taught how to really gamble (he remembers one guy saying he was going to tell him how to win at the roulette so that he didn’t become like his old man after and he hadn’t had the courage to refuse), then you can afford to play once in a while. It’s not that he likes it. He just knows how to do it and once in a while it comes handy, especially right now. He sees that Ben is using a stacked deck from a mile away seeing how he’s folding, and while he knows he could overcome the problem, he decides that he wants to set the mood.
“Mr. Linus, is that deck from the house?”
“No, it’s mine. But no one has had problems using it before.”
“Oh, that really isn’t a problem. I just wanted to know. Well, are we doing it the classic way or the Hold ‘Em way?”
“I personally prefer the classic way myself, but your pick.”
“Classic is fine. Do we have a minimum bet?”
“What about five dollars?”
“Five dollars it is. Then I’m ready.”
Jack cuts the deck, knowing that his cards won’t be good; but he doesn’t really care, he just wants to see exactly how Ben is cheating. It’s not like he doesn’t know at least fifteen ways to cheat in a poker game anyway.
He gets a couple of nines and when he changes one card he comes up with another couple of eights; he isn’t surprised when Ben takes his five dollars with a four of a kind of queens. But none of the four queens is the first card; Jack figures that they were already set and he just did like one guy who cheated his old man once and dealt himself four cards he already had positioned.
Well, fine.
He receives the deck from Ben and he notices that there are some cards just slightly shorter than the others as soon as he starts to fold; fine again, he thinks as Ben cuts. Then he deals, alright, but he grabs it with his index finger and he doesn’t let his features change as he sees Ben’s small gasp; sure, it is a trick and it is a cheat and now he’s dealing the cards looking at them first, but he figures that Ben has understood that if he calls Jack on his cheating, Jack will call him on his own.
Jack wins the hand with a full house and Ben fumes as Jack receives the forty dollars he gained (he bet twenty and Ben had to meet it).
Then Ben looks straight at him and Jack swallows. Fuck, that stare sure creeps the hell out of him still.
“So, doctor, it looks like we both know what we’re up to. Right?”
“Pretty much. And that’s why I have a proposition.”
“What?”
“I have fifty dollars now, and your forty here. I’ll be glad to bet it all on a final hand, if you bet the same, if we play it with the house’s deck and if my friend there deals us the cards. What about it?”
Ben’s pale skin looks paler for a second, but then he nods, his lips stretched in a thin line.
“Fine. Mr. Reyes, would you be so kind to provide us with a new deck of cards?”
Hurley nods and runs to get them, while Jack turns towards Sawyer.
“Sawyer, would you mind dealing us the cards?”
“Yeah, sure, but...”
“Then take that one and do it.”
Sawyer takes the deck from Hurley and starts to shuffle. Jack is sure that it’s clean just by looking at it and is pretty sure that Sawyer doesn’t even know the ABC’s of proper poker cheating; he knows that Ben probably has another deck hidden, but he’ll think about it later. They have Locke cutting and then Jack gets served and bites his tongue in order not to smile behind his cards. Now these are good, if only he has a bit of luck. Ben changes two cards, he changes one.
Then he pushes a bundle of money in the center of the table.
“Well, that’s it. Ninety dollars.”
Ben pushes another bundle of money himself.
“There’s ninety. And I am really sad for you right now.”
“Really. Why?”
Ben smiles again that unsettling smile of his and lays a neat poker of tens with an ace of hearts standing near it.
“What do you have?”
“Nothing you will like.”
Then Jack lays down his royal flush of spades, including a ten. Five tens appear over the table and now that is really, really wrong. Ben becomes even paler and Jack stops him before he can start to speak.
“See, I’m sure you could say that I cheated, since one of us has to have cheated. But I could tell you that the ten was the card I received earlier and you couldn’t prove me wrong, could you? Also, who knows what’s hidden in that left sleeve of yours, since I couldn’t see it for some five seconds while he was dealing the second round of cards? So, since I have technically won this round, I’d say you let me have the money, we’ll ignore that fifth ten and you won’t come around these parts for a while. A long while. What do you say, Mr. Linus?”
Ben stands up, takes his coat, casts Jack an icy glance and slams the door as he gets out. Jack hasn’t managed to take his money back from the table when Sawyer’s hand lands on his shoulder, shaking it.
“Damn it, that was some fine job.”
“I had fine teachers.”
He gives Danielle all of Ben’s money then; it’s not only that she was robbed of hers, for how much it could be, but he just doesn’t want the man’s money. And then Hurley’s hand is on his shoulder too and Jack feels like it might indeed get dislocated.
“Dude, that was... so great that I need to offer you lunch at least.”
That’s how they all end up in a nearby small restaurant eating the nicest dinner they had in a while; it’s him, Sawyer, Hurley, Locke, Danielle and Alex, who is a tall and thin young woman, probably sixteen or so, who actually looks way healthier than Sawyer keeps on saying he remembered her. Danielle tells him that she found this rich woman who needed two maids and didn’t care about the origin or the age as long as they worked hard. They did and so also managed two full meals each day.
“But at the beginning it was horrible,” Danielle remarks as she eats.
“Working camps?”
“Camps? We picked fruit. I swear, this is such a nice place, it’s green and the weather is so good and it’s just so nice, but as long as you don’t have time to sit down with something to eat every day, you just don’t notice it. I thought we should’ve gone back more than once.”
Jack then feels Sawyer’s elbow in his hip.
“What’s that?”
“Told you this mornin’. See why folk music is always ahead of the times? Or on par, at least.”
“What, that thing you were singing this morning?”
“Sure. California’s the garden of Eden, a paradise to live in and see, but believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot if you ain’t got the do re mi. And I don’t mean music by that. And I’m sure you know it way too well.”
Nothing to say about it; Jack knows it way too well indeed.
TBC