Bluff

by Michael Kardos

  Then I saw the poker table, the back of my body, my arms, my hands, and then it was us, our game, as viewed from behind me and slightly overhead.

  What was higher than high definition? This. I couldn’t believe how clear the visual was, and how large everything was on the screen. Victor had started playing the video, and we watched the prior hand unfold. He forwarded the video and we played the hand at triple speed. He slowed the video again as Victor, on the screen, reached over to cut the blue deck for me. The men staring at the TV screen were motionless and unblinking. They were watching my hands on the screen. I watched myself reach out and complete the cut. I watched myself square up the deck and shift to my left. I began to deal.

  Ian, Danny, Jason, Ellen, Victor, me.

  Ian, Danny, Jason, Ellen, Victor, me.

  No one had said anything during the deal, and I’d forgotten there was sound on the recording until I heard Victor utter that one, horrific word: Wait.

  He pointed the remote control and the screen and the video paused.

  “So?” he said.

  “I saw it,” Danny said.

  “What did you see?” Victor asked.

  “Something. I definitely saw something. Like you said—when she dealt the cards to herself. It was different.”

  “What about you guys?” Victor asked Ian and Jason.

  “Maybe,” Ian said.

  Jason nodded. “I’m pretty sure I saw something. But I couldn’t tell you what it was.”

  “Play it again,” Ian said.

  Victor rewound the video in play mode, and we watched the cards float away from the table and back into the deck of cards in my hand. I swung my body to the right, placed the deck on the table, uncut it into two halves. He pressed play again, and the men watched, transfixed, as I dealt the two hole cards to all six players. Victor paused the video again.

  Jason said, “I can’t tell you what she’s doing, but it was something. It was like a—a blip.”

  “Victor, you saw it that time, didn’t you?” Danny asked.

  “I think I did.” He turned his head to face Russell. “What about you?”

  “Play it again,” Russell said with no emotion. The pressure on my arm increased.

  “Can’t you do that in slow motion?” Danny asked. “Like frame by frame?”

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “That’s a good idea.” Once again the cards flew up from the table and inserted themselves into the deck, and I pivoted and placed the deck on the table. Time then moved forward again on the screen, but at a pulled-apart, glacial pace. The ten seconds of dealing must have taken well over a minute. The men in the room turned to statues, leaning forward in their seats, gazes fixed on the screen, determined to catch this new addition to their game, this stranger, this potential enemy among them. I couldn’t blame them. Had I been them, I would have stared at the screen—at my long, high-def fingers—with the same ferocity. I saw something, Victor had said, and now they were all seeing it. And from where I stood, with Russell’s eyes fixed on the screen and his fingers fixed to my arm, I could see myself deal the hand yet again, too—not that I needed to; I knew what I had done—and I could see them seeing their suspicions confirmed, and with only the smallest turn of my head I could see the bar with its top-shelf liquors and the poker table with its duplicitous chandelier and the seagull painting and the sanderling painting and the heron painting. I could see everything, and it all swirled around me, and my heart raced faster as the enormity of what was happening hit me with full force.

  When the slowed-down deal was over and Victor paused the video again, it was Jason who broke the silence.

  “I saw it that time,” he said. “It was like a—”

  “Like a hitch,” Ian offered.

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “Like she was pulling her own cards out of a different place.”

  “So we all saw it?” Victor asked.

  “You’re damn right,” Danny said.

  “Russell?” Victor said, turning around again.

  Russell said to his boss, “Doesn’t sound to me like you need a tiebreaker.”

  “What about you, Emily?” Jason asked. “You’re being awfully quiet.”

  Ellen was standing beside me, but not quite as close as before. “Hey, I …” She tried again. “I don’t …”

  “No one’s blaming you,” Victor said. “But I want to know what you saw.”

  She had to agree with them. To deny it—to be the sole denier in the room—would only implicate herself. We knew the plan going in. We knew the risks. We’d discussed them and agreed to them. If the plan went south, there would be no defending each other. Defending each other would only make us both look guilty.

  “I’m really not very good at spotting that sort of thing,” she said.

  “You watched the tape three times,” Victor said, any remaining patience having drained out of his voice. “I’m asking you what you saw.”

  She glanced over at me and then back at the screen even though the tape was paused, frozen on a shot of the cards already dealt, the two hole cards in front of each of us, simply another poker hand about to start, one of many, one that could be nothing special or that might contain the key to everything.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think so? Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe I did.”

  Such a timid assertion, and she even emphasized the word “maybe.” But I felt the room darken.

  “Damn it,” Victor said, and got up from his seat. He sounded as if he’d been driving and had come upon a dead horse lying across the road. It was sad, and there was no going around it.

  Following Victor’s cue, the other men stood up as well.

  “You can’t get away with this kind of bullshit,” Danny growled. “Victor, she can’t.”

  “No, she can’t,” Ian said. “It’s really fucked up.” He shifted from foot to foot. They were all in motion now, wringing their hands, rubbing their arms. It was as if the anxious, angry energy of these men, forced to remain dormant while they’d watched the TV screen, now demanded release.

  “She’s gonna forfeit her chips, obviously.” Victor faced me. “Damn it, why would you come here and do that? Huh? What kind of—”

  “Forfeit her chips?” Danny looked around at the other men. “Victor, there’s a fortune at stake here. You gotta do something. I mean, this is your home.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” Jason said, “we’re gonna let people know about her. Let people know she’s a cheat.”

  “Wrong.” Victor raised his voice for the first time. He stared down the other players. “Now I want you all to listen to me. I’m running for office. Do you understand what that means? It means this game doesn’t exist. The Midnight Riders? Doesn’t exist.”

  “Yeah, yeah, your sterling reputation,” Ian said. “But Vic.” He gestured all around him. “Danny’s right. This is your home. It reflects on you. You let her get away with this, that’s your reputation, too.”

  “No one’s getting away with anything.” Victor took a breath. “I’m only saying let’s all calm down a second.”

  “Fuck you, Victor.”

  “Danny, come on—”

  “No, really. You invite a cheat to your table and then you act like it’s no big deal. If you kick her out, then she’s no worse off than she’d be if she’d lost. What, are you involved in this somehow?”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. “I think you want to watch what you say.”

  Russell, still holding on to my arm, stood up straighter.

  When Danny spoke again, his voice was more measured. “She tried to cheat in a very high-stakes game, Vic. That ain’t right. It’s so far from right.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” The hair on the back of my neck stood on end a split second before I realized Victor had just referred to me as it.

  “I want you to make it right,” Danny said.

  “She forfeits her buy-in,” Victor said. “The rest of us split it up—a nice little payday—and we reschedu
le the game for another night.”

  “Says the guy who’s down,” Ian said. “I’m up. I have a good chance to win the thing.”

  “Or we can go back to playing if you want,” Victor said. “We divide her stake and keep playing.”

  Danny was shaking his head. “The whole fucking night’s ruined. Make it right.”

  Victor rubbed his temples and faced me. “Why’d you have to do that? Why’d you have to go and cheat and ruin the whole night?”

  I wanted Ellen to say something, but she was being quiet. So quiet. I didn’t know what to do or say, yet I knew I had to mount my own defense. “I already told you,” I said. “I didn’t—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Danny said.

  I pretended to ignore him. “I’m gonna go,” I said to Victor.

  It couldn’t hurt to try leaving again—but Russell wasn’t lightening his grip, and Danny, who evidently didn’t like being ignored, got right up in my face and barked out: “Bitch, you’ll stay here.”

  “She’ll forfeit her buy-in.” Finally, Ellen was speaking up. “Won’t you, Nora? She will. We drove here together, but I swear I’ll take her out of your neighborhood and drop her off and never talk to her again. I’m so sorry, guys. I hate how this makes me look. I don’t know much about Nora. I thought I knew her, but obviously I was wrong.”

  “Both of you get out of here,” Jason said.

  “Sure,” Ellen said. “We’ll get our coats and go. I don’t know her well, but I know that a quarter million dollars can’t come easily. Forfeiting the buy-in is gonna hurt her, probably forever. I get the sense she’s not as wealthy as she says she is, and for all we know she could’ve borrowed her stake, and whoever loaned her the money is gonna come knocking when she can’t repay. So forfeiting the buy-in isn’t nothing. It’s probably real bad for her.” Unless it was my imagination, the temperature in the room warmed a degree. Ellen had found her voice, and it was a soothing one. I hoped it was persuasive. “So we’re gonna go now,” she said. “I’m gonna need to cash out, but we’ll leave Nora’s money, and that’s the end of it. Okay?”

  At first no one replied, as if everyone were waiting for someone else.

  “Okay?” she said again.

  Oh, Ellen, I thought.

  You were doing so well. But when a door opens for you, you walk through it. You don’t double-check whether it’s really a door.

  “Hold on a minute,” Victor said. “Just wait a minute while I think.”

  I would have made a move for the exit, and maybe the other men would have let me go, but Russell was a trained dog waiting for his master’s command to release. We were all frozen, just like on the TV screen. Everything was motionless and mute everywhere on the whole planet.

  “Oh, fuck it,” Danny said, shattering the stillness. “I’ll do it myself. No one’s gonna steal my hard-earned money.”

  Then he was on me.

  A large man, he yanked me away from Russell and over to the bar. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he was muttering. “Try to take my money.” Adrenaline and rage fueled him as he shoved me against the bar. “Hold her here!” he shouted, and Russell, after a quick glance at Victor, obeyed this other master. He held me while Danny reached for—oh, Jesus—the knife lying on the bar that Jason had used to cut the lemons for his vodka tonic. Danny had the knife in his hand, but I didn’t know what he had in mind until he said, “You got to lay her hand flat against the bar,” and Russell moved my hand as if it were made of paper so it was pinned there on the bar top, and I nearly screamed or fainted or vomited but before I could do any of those things, Victor said, “Stop this! Stop it immediately!”

  Everyone froze.

  “Danny, put the damn knife down,” he said. “I said put it down.”

  Danny obeyed.

  I could have hugged Victor Flowers.

  He looked at me, and at the knife on the bar top, as if it had finally dawned on him that these men were about to do something horrific. As if realizing that it had gone too far too fast, but that it was still possible to step back from the brink, to rewind this unfolding moment just as he had rewound the video. It could all still be nothing other than a ruined poker night. A ruined evening, but not worse than that. I could still go home.

  “I will not allow blood in this room,” Victor said. And for one more blissful moment I continued to misunderstand. “Anyway, that,” he said, pointing, “is the wrong kind of knife.” The skin on my face lost its feeling. “I want everyone in the kitchen. Now.”

  3

  Russell was suddenly dragging me through the doorway, tugging me across the house toward the kitchen, the others trailing. The sounds I heard came from me, I think, though Ellen was saying things, too, she was shouting, and my blood was screaming in my ears, and someone—Jason?—said, Hold on a minute, will you? and then my body was being shoved against the kitchen island and I could smell Russell against me, his sweat and something else, something harsh and vulgar, and Danny was reaching up for something—What was it? What was he reaching for?—and I felt my arm being yanked outward, and one of my hands smacked the island countertop while the other arm was pinned against my body, and then I saw what Danny had reached for, big and awful, a meat cleaver that had been hanging above the island with all those other pots and pans and knives, and my vision scrambled for a second and finally found Victor, but he was facing the window—he was gone, checked out—and my legs went soft and I made a desperate jerk with my body, but Russell held on tight. He wasn’t youthful anymore, but he still had strength and was steady and businesslike, and my eyes were fixed on the cleaver in Danny’s hand.

  “Here,” he said, offering the cleaver to Ellen. “Take it.”

  She began to protest: “Please, you all need to—”

  “You brought her here,” he said. “Prove to us you weren’t in on it.”

  Ellen watched the cleaver, eyes wide.

  “She isn’t in on it,” Victor said, back with us again. “I know she isn’t.”

  “You know? How do you know?” Danny put his face close to mine. “Was she in on it?”

  I forced myself to shake my head.

  “Is that a no?”

  My tongue felt huge in my mouth. My voice was a curled-up insect. “N-no …”

  “I vouch for her, okay?” Victor said.

  “Yeah?” Danny nodded toward the cleaver. “Let’s see you vouch for her.”

  Russell was crushing my hand. He had pulled the thumb and two fingers toward the edge of the island and down, leaving the exposed fourth and fifth fingers stretched out over the flat surface of the island.

  “This is so wrong,” Ian said, and I nearly wept with thanks, until he turned to me and said, “I mean, Nora, how could you do this to us?”

  A whimper escaped my lungs, and I yanked my arm so hard I thought my shoulder would dislocate. But my hand didn’t budge.

  “Take it,” Danny told Victor, still offering the cleaver. “This is your house, and it was our money. You have to show her that cheaters don’t prosper.”

  “Just hold it a minute,” Victor said. He took the cleaver and set it on the island. “We gotta slow this down.”

  “Man, this election is muddling your brain,” Danny said. “I got news for you, Vic. She ain’t voting for you.”

  “I don’t want you joking right now,” Victor said.

  “Joking? No. I don’t hear any jokes. And I’ll tell you something else that isn’t a joke. I place a couple of calls and it’s over for you. I know how you use that foundation. How you cook your books.”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. “Like you’re so clean.”

  “Me? Who cares? I’m a fucking car salesman,” Danny said. “But you know me well enough to know I don’t deal with bullshit, and this right here is the biggest bullshit I’ve come across in a long time.”

  “Come on, Danny.”

  “Come on, nothing. Nobody cheats me and gets away with it. Not for money like this. Now you’re gonna make this rig
ht. Or by the time I’m done with you, the Flowers Corporation will be worthless and you won’t get elected dog catcher.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Danny—”

  “Oh, just be a man, will you?”

  Victor glared at Danny for another moment, then surveyed his kitchen—the men, Ellen, and me, with my hand still pinned to the kitchen island, the fourth and fifth fingers still fully exposed. Whatever calculation Victor was doing in his mind, whatever was tipping the scale in one direction or the other, didn’t take long.

  “I forgot something in the other room,” he said. His voice seemed to hold no anger or aggression, seemed to hold nothing at all, and some remote lizard part of my brain sent an extra burst of panic that nearly shut me down completely.

  “You sure, Vic?” Russell said.

  Victor’s reply was to turn his back on us and quietly leave the room.

  The moment he was gone, Russell reached up lightning fast and with the flat part of his thick hand slapped the front of my face, connecting with my eyes and the bridge of my nose. Hard enough to shock and sting but nothing more. The slap wasn’t meant to injure, only to misdirect. I squeezed my eyes shut and never saw him pick up the cleaver. But it was up and then down on my last two fingers so fast, I heard the bang and its echo against the kitchen’s hard surfaces before I felt the pain.

  Then came a second of stunned silence, and in that second there was no pain either. I forced my eyes open and saw a brightly lit room where four men and one other woman stood, frozen, a record stopped in mid-spin on its turnstile, a planet stopped in mid-spin on its axis.

  Or maybe it was only half a second.

  Then everything revved again, too fast, and there came the obscene wave of pain and shouting and blood and pain and the drop of the cleaver on the island and the Jesus and the My god and the pain, and I was on the floor, crouched over my hand, clutching it with my other hand, and there was blood, so much blood, and I heard, Someone get a dish towel!

  I heard: This is what happens!

  I heard: No, don’t—Russell! No!

  I heard a machine’s whir and grind.