There were two new emails in Arthur's inbox; one was from his wife, the other was from the Athena Spa, where he knew his wife had been for a massage that afternoon. He opened the email from his wife first. The subject was 'Anniversary Present'.
'That was the most wonderful extraordinary anniversary present that a woman could ever have. You have opened my eyes to what's important.'
He read her short email a couple of times, feeling warm and contented. His present to her had obviously fulfilled all his hopes.
He was puzzled to receive an email from the Athena Spa with a video attachment and opened it with interest.
The idea of a massage for his wife had arisen three weeks before.
He was having a poker game with Jim and it was before they started the game that Arthur told him that he was having a problem thinking of an anniversary present for his wife, Penny.
Arthur loved his wife very much. They had been married ten years and were both thirty. His wife was still a beauty. In fact, since her breasts had become larger and her butt developed by determined gym work, she was a stunner. He'd noticed how other men ogled her and hated their lustful looks of which his wife was completely unaware. He was very possessive and encouraged her not to wear any clothing that was too revealing.
Even though they were very happy, he believed he would have been even happier if their sex life had been a bit more exciting. Because of his snoring, they had slept in separate beds for the last five years, so the possibilities of sex were greatly reduced. They'd tried oral sex on one drunken night on their honeymoon, but Penny had found it distasteful and had never wanted to do it since. She was happy for him to be in the missionary position, but never wanted to get on top herself or to be taken doggy style. He wondered why she should be so unadventurous and asked her rather nervously if it was because his cock might be considered by some women as a little smaller than average. Penny hugged him and persuaded him that size did not matter in the least. It was how he used it that counted she said and promised him that he made love to her wonderfully.
He did find her words reassuring, but would have been even more convinced if she'd become more animated during their lovemaking. He could always tell when she was excited by her distinctive moans, which he didn't seem to hear often. Her last orgasm was years before and he remembered it well as it was the night she'd been to see Fifty Shades of Grey with some girlfriends. As he fucked her, her mewing cries had built up to a high pitched shriek that had him cumming simultaneously with her. Although he had enjoyed the fantastic experience of his wife cumming, he suspected that, with her eyes closed, Penny had been imagining being fucked by the actor she had seen in the film.
Yes his wife was gorgeous and their life together contented, except that he had a hidden gambling problem. Well he didn't acknowledge it as a problem enough to attend a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, but it did mean that he never had any spare money, especially for things like anniversary presents. His debts were not huge, but they never seemed to diminish. His wife didn't seem to notice, but he was well aware that he couldn't treat her to something special as often as he'd have liked. In fact, the purpose of the poker game with Jim was to take enough money off him to at least give Arthur some money to spend on Penny.
Arthur didn't like Jim much. He was a guy in his early twenties, whom he'd met in a local bar one evening, joking about how women loved the size of his cock. Arthur admitted to himself that Jim was handsome, in an uncouth kind of way. Jim kept his body in good shape, which was not surprising as Jim had some kind of Assistant Manager's job at the Athena Spa. Jim boasted that he was extremely fit and could keep a woman satisfied for hours. In short, Jim was arrogant, but Arthur knew it was the kind of arrogance that could lead Jim to lose a lot of money to him. The only thing that Arthur had regretted after meeting Jim was that, in a drunken moment in the bar, he had confessed to Jim that he borrowed money from his wife's Trust Account. He intended of course to pay it back when he had the funds.
Arthur had allowed Jim to win some small amounts on the previous two occasions that they played. However, tonight Arthur was hoping to take him for a thousand dollars. Arthur's wife never knew Arthur played poker, believing he was playing some kind of friendly whist game. Jim had seen Arthur and Penny once together and told Arthur afterwards that his wife was a gorgeous piece of candy. Arthur certainly didn't want Jim ogling Penny, so he ensured that she never met him. He always played poker at Jim's place.
Tonight Jim was obviously feeling confident. He had been going to gamble five hundred dollars, but apparently earlier in the day he looked so confident that his sister, Eve, who was five years older than him and also worked at the Athena Spa, insisted on investing four hundred of her own money. And then his younger eighteen year-old brother, Pete, who worked at the Spa at weekends, also invested a hundred dollars of his hard earned savings. It was therefore a thousand dollars that Jim placed on the table next to his drink. Arthur was not a good poker player, which is why he owed so much money. However, he was banking on being better than Jim and to make sure of that Arthur intended to cheat. Arthur was feeling pretty confident then, as he placed his own thousand dollars of stake money on the table.
Arthur saw Jim's eighteen year-old brother, Pete, come in through the front door. He went straight upstairs, but not before he had eagerly glanced across at the card table.
The hands were fairly even until one of the deals when Arthur dealt the cards, where Arthur knew they both had good hands. Jim tried to hide his excitement, but Arthur could see his breath becoming shorter. Arthur had calculated that Jim would swap one card and then Arthur would swap one card which would result in him have the winning hand. However it suddenly started to go wrong. Instead of drawing one card as the probability rules said he should have done, Jim drew two. This meant that instead of two low pairs, by sheer good luck at doing the wrong thing, one of Jim's pairs was now two queens.
Jim immediately raised the stakes and Arthur pondered what to do. He knew that his two pairs were now lower than Jim's queens. He could just throw his hand in, but that would end his careful plan of setting Jim up. He decided to take a risk.
He discarded one card but, as he went to pick up his replacement, he slipped two cards up his left sleeve and extracted two cards from his other sleeve to replace them. He'd practiced the sleight of hand many times till it was perfected. The problem this time was it was not perfect. One of the replacement cards seemed to catch on his cuff, which gave a fraction of a second delay until the trick was completed.
Arthur looked quickly across at Jim, who seemed puzzled at Arthur's sudden awkwardness at holding his cards, but thankfully appeared not to notice anything unusual.
The stakes continued to rise until the whole of Jim's thousand dollars was in the middle of the table and so was Arthur's. As they had both agreed to the thousand dollars limit, they laid open their hands simultaneously.
Jim gasped, "Goddammit you've got a full house!"
Arthur collected up all the cash as he apologized to Jim for such a lucky hand. Jim just stared vacantly at the table.
There was hardly any conversation between them as Arthur put his coat on to leave until Jim said "Wait."
He then said, "Arthur, I'm sorry I've been such a poor loser, but I can make it up to you. I've been thinking about your wife's anniversary present. Why don't you give her a VIP day at the Athena Spa. I can help you. It would normally cost over five thousand dollars, but I can get that reduced."