[pshrynk]

Harv was looking at his hand and wondering if he'd gotten the tell right on Howard Hughes. The man was one giant twitch and every time he looked at the mark in the pot that represented his plane, it got worse. He thought he had the dame figured out. She had a tell of lightly chewing the inside of her lower lip when she was bluffing and her right ear moved slightly when she had a great hand. Otherwise she was stone cold. Right now, she was moving her lower lip in a fashion that suggested she was about to bluff herself naked. Which, come to think of it, wasn't a bad idea, either.

"Boss!" came a voice from near the floor. "We gotta get out of here!"

"Not now, Vivaldi. We're in the middle of a hand."

"We're going to be in the middle of our own guts if we don't get going!"

"What's got your pants on fire?"

The small grey dog looked around at his butt. "I don't wear pants! But if they were on fire, I would sure as heck be on my way out the door, rather than hanging around in here."

"Shh!" said the humans at the table.

Harv looked back at this hand and waited for the dealer to flip out the last card. He was already holding a full house, aces over Kings, so he was pretty confident in his odds. He was a bit more concerned with the dealer, however. He'd never actually seen a squid dealing cards before. He had thought that they were mostly aquatic creatures and didn't communicate all that well.

This one, however, was giving him the impression that he was saying, "Well, I realize that this role would be better be served by a skinny man with a green visor on, smoking a cigarette and wearing garters on his sleeves, but there you have it. Personally, I'm going to be calling my agent right after we get done with this scene."*

Harv was starting to worry about his sanity.




*Squid don't talk much, but are very emotive.