The following night finds Ace sitting around his card table in his garage, surrounded by his friends for their regular Poker Night.
Kyle Black, still dressed in his auto mechanic CoverAlls, cleans his hands in the sink so the cards don't get grimy.
Donovan Pellicano is looking sharp, but discrete as only a professional Fixer can.
Earl Boyd has that air that only a Doctor can have after seeing a room full of patients all day.
Despite their differences, they all look completely comfortable with each other as only Poker buddies can be.
As per the usual arrangement, they all meet at Ace's garage since it had the largest free space for them all to gather.
One brings the beer, the second brings the food, the third brings the munchies, and Ace has to clean the garage so it could hold the gathering.
The friends have always cycled between whom brought what each week, so no single one of them ever got stuck with the bill more than once or twice a month.
Tonight, Kyle had brought a couple of cases of beer, packed into an ice chest full of cubes, & the alcohol was flowing down their throats like Bacchanalian wine.
Don had brought some Chinese food, complete with those stupid fortune cookies, and the noodles were getting sucked down in long, noisy squealches.
Boyd had hit a grocery store on his way in, so now there were bags of chips flayed open around the table, & there were ice cream cups down in the cooler as well.
With food & drink covered, the pot looking like a rainbow of spilled chips, and Ace's hand consisting of a Full House of Jacks & Sevens, it was shaping up to be a fine night indeed.
He was down 20 credits by this point, but one look at the Pot & his hand gave him hope that his luck was about to change.
It fell in his favor as the next best hand was another Full House, but this one of merely Fives & Sixes, so with a whoop of glee he scooped up his chips & sat back nearly back in black...
Thus the night went on, back & forth, winning & losing, eating, belching, drinking, farting, shooting the s4, & laughing so hard at times that the foam nearly flew out the nose.
Once all the food was gone & the last six pack of beer drowning in the dregs of the ice chest at their feet, Ace was down by 60 NuYen but happy as a pig in s4 from the camaraderie.
He didn't mind TOO badly that he was a little lighter in the wallet for the night, but the friendship was all the more richer for the nonce.
Forming a circle around the ice chest, feet up on the chest as if it were a hassock instead, the four friends began the usual updating of their lives.
Stuff happening at work, crap at home, annoyances while running errands, what the wife &/or kids were up to, grief being shoveled by relatives, and all the venting that friends do to each other as they keep each other up to date.
Ace told them a generalized, low level, no specific details synapsis of his latest run of the shadows: meeting in a bar with good drinks, keeping an eye out for some hawt chick, some guy fraggin folks at random, & getting an "Atta Boy"
from the Mister J.
After a long pull on his beer, Ace's ComLink buzzed with a message from Block.
Ace read it, smirked, then typed in a response.
As an afterthought, he then asked his friends if he could invite another guy over for the next Poker Night, at which point a boisterous cheer of "Fresh Meat!" filled the room.
By the time the last beer was glugged down & the empties tossed in the recycle can, Ace was happily drunk, gas escaping out both ends from the noodles, & eager to invite his new friend to the gathering...
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