"Hundred-dollar ante," said Leon, "and then it's two hundred a bet, and then there's the mating, at which time you can bid for a hand or sell yours. After that there's another round of bets, still at two hundred."
Same stakes as twenty-one years ago, Crane thought as he pulled his roll of bills out of his purse, peeled off a hundred, and tossed it into the center of the table. Very damned high ante, so that you've got an investment before you even see your first card and then no sharp increases to chase anybody out.
His father opened the wooden box and fanned the Tarot cards out across the table's green felt surface.
Though they did still start up a ringing wail in his head, Crane was able to look at the cards without flinching now; it was as if the sight of them had broken his identity so many times that his identity had finally begun to conform to them. The Hanged Man and Death and the Two of Sticks now seemed to stare up at him as if at a peer.
Other players weren't so fortunate. One of the necktied executives bolted his drink and tremblingly crossed himself, and the two young women gagged, and no one at all looked happy. One man was suddenly crying, very softly. No one remarked on it.
Several people had cigarettes smoldering in ashtrays, and the smoke from all sides drifted in over the center of the table.
Leon separated out the twenty-two Major Arcana cards and put them aside. Then he flipped the remaining cards over, quickly shuffled them seven times, and began to deal out the first two face down cards.
Crane of course had to wait through twelve hands for the deal to come all the way around to him. During that time he never bought a hand, but managed five times to sell his own uncompleted four-card hands for a profit, and by the time it was his deal he had made a couple of hundred dollars. Several of the players seemed to be checking, and then either calling or folding, without subjecting themselves to the ordeal of actually looking at the cards they held.
When the deck was at last shoved across the green felt to Crane, he picked it up and said, with a little bit of urgency, "What time is it?"
During the moment when everybody was looking at a watch or craning to find a clock on the wall, under the cover of one spread hand he quickly spilled the deck into the open purse on his lap and flipped out the stacked deck.
"Eight and some change," called the Amino Acid bartender from the other end of the lounge.
"Thanks," said Crane. "I get luckier after eight." He split the switched-in deck and riffled the two blocks together, but then, while the interleaved blocks were still at right angles, he smoothly pulled them through each other as though he were separating two meshed combs; he did this rapidly several more times, seeming each time to shuffle the cards thoroughly but actually keeping them in the same order.
Finally he passed the deck to the man on his right for the cut. When the man had lifted off half of the deck and set it beside the remainder, Crane completed the cut but left a step in the two blocks of cards, Scarne's "infinitesimal terrace," so that when he lifted the deck in one hand, he was able to reverse the cut with his palm and the bases of his fingers.
Despite the apparent shufflings and cut, the cards were in the same order as they had been in his purse.
He was absorbed with the play now, and he had forgotten his ludicrous disguise. He spun the cards out across the green felt, two down and one up.
An Ace of Cups to the left of Leon brought in the bet for two hundred dollars, and it was called all the way around; the second up card paired one woman's Ten, and she bet two hundred, and again the bet was called by the whole table. Everybody was staying for the mating, as Crane had anticipated.
Crane had dealt himself half of the hand that Doctor Leaky had bought this morning, the Ten and Eight of Swords down and the Seven and Nine of Swords up; the other half of Doctor Leaky's hand was now Leon's hand, which was showing the Six and Eight of Cups, and since Leon was the player to Crane's left, his was the first hand to come up for bid.
"We got the Six and Eight of Cups for bid," said Crane lightly. "He's got five hundred in the pot."
At least one of the thirteen players would have to be frozen out when the mating cut the action down to six hands, and the man Crane had elected for that office, who was showing a Nine of Cups and a Two of Sticks, bid $550 for Leon's hand. Crane knew the man had the Two and Seven of Coins down and was hoping for a Straight.
Leon shook his head.
"Six hundred," said Crane.
Leon shrugged and nodded, and Crane looked to the other bidder to see if he would top that bid.
But the other bidder waved in defeat.
Leon flipped up his down cards and shoved all four across to Crane.
With a steady hand Crane slid them next to his own cards and separated out of his roll six hundred-dollar bills, tossing them onto the empty spot of green felt in front of Leon.
Crane was now holding the complete hand that Doctor Leaky had bought in the liquor store parking lot—a King-high Flush—and if the other players followed the courses he had prepared for them, he would win this hand at the showdown, and Leon could then exercise his Assumption option.
The Ace-King that had led off the premating betting was bought by one of the necktie-lads—to make, as Crane knew, an Ace-high Straight—and the next hand was reliably bought to make three Fours for one of the women.
But the next man, whose hand showed the Three of Cups and the Six of Coins, and who was supposed to sell his hand to the man showing the Nine and Five of Coins to make a Nine-high Flush, refused the expected bid.
Crane stared at the man with the Nine and Five. Offer him more, he thought, trying to project the order telepathically. You've got four of the Coins suit down, and he's showing one up; you'll have a Flush, you idiot! Buy it!
The man, though, shook his head; no one else bid on the hand, and the next hand in turn came up for auction.
Crane's carefully constructed sequence was broken.
He sat back and pressed his side, absently wondering if the steady bleeding would soak through the bandage and stain his dress. He tried to remember all the cards in all the hands, and to guess how the hand might turn out, now that it was out of his control. His King-high Flush might still win; he had been careful to give everybody cards that looked good but wouldn't add up to any killer hands.
But when the ninth hand, showing a Six and a Four, came up for bid, the man who had refused to sell the Three and the Six bought it.
You're one lucky moron, thought Crane bitterly as the cards and money were exchanged across the table. You paid for a low Straight, but I happen to know you bought a Full Boat, Threes over Sixes. Which beats me. And I can't hope to bluff you out at the showdown—my board doesn't even show a pair; I clearly can have nothing better than a Flush.
When the sixth hand was mated and conceived, and the raised bet came around to him, Crane smiled tightly and turned his cards face down.
"I'm out," he said.
The cigarette smoke just hung in flat layers under the paneled ceiling. Neither Crane nor Leon was involved in the hand any longer.
All Crane could do now was play for money and, of course, never buy a hand from Leon.
And twice he looked on, helplessly, as Leon became a parent of a winning hand, matched the pot, and lost the Assumption. Each time, the big brown man smiled under his bandage as he ran his fingers down the stack of cards, and his smile didn't falter when he failed to feel the crimped Two—he must have thought some player had straightened the card—and he picked the low card even without that help.
"You're taking money for the hand," Leon said each time as the player was happily raking in the enormous pot. "And I've bought it. I've assumed it."