“Gabe pulled the card from the envolope. I want to help you. He flipped the card over. You are the best thing to ever happen to Vernon.Then in the tiniest script were words that Gabe had to squint to read:PS. The dog's name is Guppy.”

“I love you, Katherine James. I love you with everything I am. You're the best thing that has ever happened to me. Remember that."Gabe Rossiter”

“Kelly?” Owen called, “You want breakfast?”“Does Gabe have pants on yet?”“I’m on it,” Gabe promised.“Then yeah.”

“Gabe!” she calls. “Dr. Gabe.”He looks at her blankly“Don’t you know me? You’re my OB-GYN.”Gabe’s eyes move instinctively from her face to her crotch. He stares between her legs for a beat. His face lights up in recognition, as if he has X-ray vision.“Joanne! Sure . . . Joanne. How are you?”Both Joanne and I break up. Gabe blushes.“I see so many women,” he says, making it worse.”

“The way he saw it, poker and life had a lot in common. You played the cards you were dealt, figured the odds, took the gamble or not. And when your cards were shit, you bluffed if the pot was worth it, and if you had balls.”

“I could lie there as long as I wanted, and let all the pictures of things a man might want run through my head, coffee, a girl, money, a drink, white sand and blue water, and let them all slide off, one after another, like a deck of cards slewing slowly off your hand. Maybe the things you want are like cards. You don't want them for themselves, really, though you think you do. You don't want a card because you want the card, but because in a perfectly arbitrary system of rules and values and in a special combination of which you already hold a part the card has meaning. But suppose you aren't sitting in a game. Then, even if you do know the rules, a card doesn't mean a thing. They all look alike.”