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That got a laugh. She didn’t react, not outwardly. She would make Earl wish he’d never seen a hand of poker. She was going to crush his spirit in all the ways a woman who’d been banned from poker tournaments in Vegas could.
Zeke sat straighter in his chair; he did not like that. He looked directly at her, a lazy, satisfied grin on his face that was a hurricane warning. She gave him the hand signal for I’ve got this. He scratched his shoulder telling her he had her back.
Now poker school was in session.
“I don’t think you should talk to my sister like that, Earl,” Zeke said. “That was disrespectful. Ever since we arrived there’s been one standard for me and another for Rosie. I don’t like it. I want it to stop.” He tapped her foot under the table. “This isn’t 1952.”
While Earl was busy blustering, Zeke picked up the deck. Cradling the cards in his right palm, he split the pile in two equal portions, rotating his hand and pivoting the two stacks of cards along the edge of his thumb and opposing fingers to press them back together as one deck, with the cards interlaced. He finished by hollowing out his hand and shuffling them into place against his thumb and little finger.
And then he did it again with his left hand.
Without missing a beat, he dealt, giving each card enough topspin that it landed precisely in f
ront of each player at blistering speed.
“Quick game is a good game,” he said to stunned looks.
“Fucking con,” said Earl.
“Just didn’t like you trash talking my sister.”
“Let’s see if you can play as well as you can do card tricks,” Wayne said.
He played them into the dirt, fairly and squarely from what she could tell, earning them their own circle of hushed spectators. He bluffed them in to making stupid bets on hands they didn’t expect him to beat. He played smart and cool and took their chips while they played angry at being deceived and made mistakes.
Rory focused on Earl, slowly eating away at his pile of chips with small accidental, apologetic wins. She otherwise didn’t change her tactics, folding early, taking losses and luring Earl by letting him think she didn’t know what she was doing.
Zeke stayed out of her road, giving her every opportunity to face off against Earl, tapping her foot every time she scored a win. She toyed with the Bulls cap-wearing misogynist. His tell was easy to read. When he had a good hand, he fiddled with the brim of his hat. When he had a bad hand, he pursed his lips.
When she got tired of him, she went all in and took every chip he had, her same suit royal flush beating his four aces.
“Fluky hand,” he said in patented bad-loser style.
She considered going crazy like Zeke had, doing her own victory dance, but on the tabletop without her T-shirt, then letting Earl know she’d been bluffing all along, but it was a secret thrill to let him stew over being beaten with a great hand, and an excellent bluff, by a woman who was only good for baby making.
“Beginner’s luck,” she said. Two words designed to rub her win in his face.
They played on and now she had a new plan. The only pot worth winning was the one that cleared the table and the only way she could beat everyone, and challenge Zeke, was by keeping them all guessing.
There was no more idle chatter about fake disasters and decaying world dramas. The game was narrowed-eyed and deliberate. Zeke took out Bernie with a hand full of nothing and more confidence than an actual shark. She took out Wayne, bankrupting him with a pair of fours and a knowing smile.
And that left Zeke and the raging competitive streak in her personality that was fully awoken. She’d take him down or bust herself trying.
Over the tops of their cards they studied each other.
“Have you got what it takes?” he said, a quirk to his lips that was biteable.
“Why don’t we see?”
She placed her opening bet and he checked it.
“How many cards, sis?”
“I think my hand is super pretty,” she said. “I’ll sit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure as I am the sun is going to rise tomorrow.” That got a laugh from the crowd that’d stuck around. Just because you chose to move to a doomsday cult, didn’t mean you lost your sense of the ridiculous.
