The Queen of Faith

by Mark Teppo

  The Queen of Hearts was the one she kept, and at first, it had been an instinctive affinity for the card that had stayed its execution. But, there was more to her decision than simply feeling a kinship to the card. There was also an external influence.

  The Poet. His story had seemed spontaneous and complete, regardless of how he protested its lack of a proper ending. The rest of his casual conversation had a similar ephemeral wit to it, and yet Clio found she could recall almost every word he had spoken during the course of the evening. The same couldn’t be said for anyone else. His words seemed like echoes of other nights, of other conversations and other stories, and she was beginning to realize that all of these echoes were self-generated.

  It wasn’t her idea. The Queen of Hearts is never alone. He had planted that in her head, but she had adopted it as her own. But that is all that matters, isn’t it? It belongs to me, and I can make it what I will. This is how my story unfolds.

  The bookie squinted at her. “Let’s see ’em,” he said. “No point in being all mysterious about it. You went all in, so turn your cards over.”

  She bristled for a second at his tone, but then, her anger snapped, and all the rest of the tension in her broke as well. The flood of euphoria was a wave that could not drown her. Riding the swell, she slipped her fingers under the cards and flipped them face-up.

  Everyone looked at the assortment of red and black pips for some time, trying to find something—anything—of worth.

  “You’ve got . . . nothing,” the bookie finally said. “Just a queen.”

  Clio laughed. “That’s right. A queen is all I have. One regal queen.” And she will come home to me, she almost said. I’m free.

  Some of her exuberance was reflected in Mistral’s eyes as he turned over his cards. “Full house, fives over threes.”

  The bookie’s eyes burned, as if the cards were dream phantoms and he didn’t dare blink for fear they would vanish. “Sixes and threes,” he said as he revealed his cards. “I have a full house too.”

  “That’s some pretty amazing luck you have there,” Mistral said, shaking his head.

  “Quite the finish,” the Poet observed, and Clio laughed again.

  She wanted to shout her freedom; to stand up and proclaim what she knew in her heart, and that there was nothing in the world, nothing written on any page, that could convince her otherwise. She wanted to tell them that the page was a worthless scrap of paper, and that it had no meaning. But, as the bookie stacked his chips and the gallery owner reluctantly turned his attention toward shuffling the deck, she realized they wouldn’t hear her. She was out—she was invisible—and the Poet’s words could no longer ensnare her.

  She was free.

  XX

  The game came down to Deke and Ralph, the distribution of chips fairly even between them. They were a contrast in styles: Deke, his hand tight, the guarded patience of an old pro who knew how mercurial the cards could be; and Ralph, filled with an aggressiveness that increased in keeping with the size of his stacks.

  Vilmo had fallen to Whitmore, and in the last hand, Deke had led Whitcombe into a blind and surprised the gallery owner with a blaze that had burned through the fat man’s two pair. The last pot was still on the table, the Poet’s page resting on top, and Deke made no move to claim any of it. Least of all the page.

  He didn’t want to touch it, not before he felt his lady again. He had come to the game for her, not to be tempted by the Poet’s mystery. She was in the room; he had seen her face on the cards several times, but she hadn’t come to his hand yet.

  He was on the desperate edge, balanced on the precipice between fortune and destitution. He was up enough to start a small stake, one he could roll into a season of games. If she didn’t come to him tonight, then he could keep looking. Every night, if he had to, until he found her.

  There was some pressure on his back, the sensation of phantom fingers pulling at him, and he knew he would never last. The sea had let go of him once, but it still wanted him. He might escape it for a few weeks, but eventually it would catch him. Each night, he was going to be that much more unbalanced, that much closer to falling off the thin track.

  “I’m going all in,” he said before Ralph could finish shuffling the cards. “What do you say? Should we end this now? Your deal. Your game. One last hand?”

  He could take the bookie’s money. He had been studying the man’s play for five hours, and Deke knew Ralph’s unconscious tells: why his leg twitched, why he tugged at his hair, and he knew aces always made the man breathe a little faster. Deke could tease every last chip away from the man, but it would take time.

  The others waited for Ralph to answer, and each second increased their wordless fascination with how the game was going to end. Their eagerness to see who won the Poet’s page was a growing pressure Ralph was trying to ignore. The bookie pretended to give Deke’s suggestion some deep thought, but Deke could tell he had already made up his mind by the way his hands shook around the cards.

  One last hand. Deke felt his fingers quivering too, and he pressed them against his lap. The dissolution of his faith in the desert had cut a deep gash in his heart. Deke had wondered if it was the type of wound that could ever really heal, and if it did, would the scar tissue be so thick he would never feel right again. Like an old drunk, he thought, I had to come back to the very thing that had ruined me. One last time. Just to see if it can make me feel anything.

  Six weeks ago, he had been in a room very much like this one: bare walls, green felt table, a group of people he had never met but who had become like family during the intense duration of the game. The final hand had been between Deke and a Hungarian with metal in his teeth and a milky cataract in his left eye. The Hungarian had lured Deke with a false sense of panic, a trembling desperation that had lent a shake to his fingers as he had toyed with his chips. Deke had been up in the chips, and when the Hungarian had gone all in, Deke had done the same, confident that he had read the other man’s secrets.

  Deke had been sitting on two pair, and the extraneous card had been the Queen of Spades. He was sure the Hungarian didn’t have a hand, but he traded the lady anyway for a chance at the full house. Just to be sure.

  The statistics had been with him—four possible cards for the full house, two pair at worst—but statistics had nothing to do with faith. He gave up the black lady, gave himself over to the sterility of the numbers, and she had given him an unmatched card, a little red thing that made his hand worthless against the Hungarian’s flush.

  “Yeah,” the bookie said suddenly, slapping the deck into his palm. “One hand. All in. Let’s do it.” He held the cards out to Deke. “Cut them.”

  Deke shook his head. “Let her do it,” he said, nodding at Clio. “Just to keep it fair.”

  The bartender’s last play had been the final nudge for Deke. The way she had given herself up to chance, abandoning everything to that one draw, had struck him deep, down where the wound from the desert lay. She had reminded him of what had been neglected, and the Poet’s story from earlier had touched him as well.

  A man couldn’t live without believing in something.

  Clio cut the deck, and Ralph dealt. “Five card draw,” he said. “Nothing wild.” The cards flew across the table, and after setting the deck aside, he toppled his towers. He committed to the hand before looking at his cards as if he might not be able to sustain his bluster if he knew what he had been dealt. He fanned his cards on the table and bent their warped edges enough to see their faces. “One,” he said with little hesitation, plucking one from the spread and mucking it.

  Deke glanced at his own hand. “Four,” he said. The cards he gave to the muck were all red, gasping hearts that hinted and whispered seductively of the real possibility for a fifth. He gave away the flush, and felt no twinge from going against the odds. He felt . . . nothing but a spreading calm. A placid sensation rippling out from his core.

  Ralph gave him four more, and he lined them up on the t
able. “That’s it, then,” he said. “We’re all done.”

  He didn’t look at the draw.

  XXI

  There was nearly five grand on the table. Ralph had been counting it for the last hour, mentally stacking up each player's chips as he worked towards a final total.

  One week, he thought, his fingers twitching. That’s what it buys me. Enough time to come back and try again, enough time to find wealthier players and take their money too. The rush would stay with him. His confidence would last.

  He licked his lips, his eyes darting to the page from the Poet’s notebook. Plus whatever I can get for that. What would they think? Would they take it to their master? Would he erase my debt if I gave it to him?

  He checked his cards one last time, just to be sure they hadn’t changed. Kings and sixes. He turned them over. “Full house.” He felt his face stretch into a wide smile. A full fucking house.

  The stranger nodded. “That’s a good hand,” he said. “Would have beat the flush I had.”

  Ralph’s smile got stuck. “Had?” The single card the other man had kept was set apart from the ones he had drawn. His hands were resting lightly on the table, still and relaxed. In no rush to turn the cards over. Five thousand dollars on the table, Ralph thought, his smile fading into a nervous tic, and he hasn’t even looked at his cards.

  At first he thought it had been a signal shared among the players—this blind play—but now, facing the gambler’s calm, the run of luck he had been having felt suddenly slippery. Did all of his fortune over the last hours matter if he lost this hand? He struggled to breathe as his mind started to play back the night, looking at every hand he had won in a different light. What had he missed? What clue—

  “Yeah,” Deke said, “Hearts.” He sat forward in his chair and slowly turned over his draw cards. Ralph counted their faces. One. Two. Three. Three queens and a four.

  Ralph swallowed heavily, and stared at the final card on the table. Even if it is another four, it won’t take my kings and sixes. Even if he had—somehow!—managed to pull a full house, it wouldn’t be enough.

  The Poet laughed suddenly, the noise startling Ralph. “Suicide kings,” he said, pointing. “You’ve got the bloody kings.”

  Ralph felt like he was in a vise, his ribs bending against his lungs and spleen. “What?” he gasped.

  “You’ve got dead men,” Vilmo said, and there was such a note of sadness in the butcher’s voice that Ralph almost looked away from Deke’s last card.

  Deke closed his eyes and turned it over. “Four of a kind,” he said quietly. “I think that takes your full house.”

  Ralph stared at the Queen of Spades, searching her benign smile for some sign of why she had betrayed him. All of them—the four ladies, red and black, red and black—they all smiled at him, their enigmatic expressions hinting at secrets he would never know.

  Something snapped inside his chest, a rib maybe—weakened by the constant pressure of the money and cards—broke, and he felt a flood of heat rush through his body. He shot to his feet, and a knife appeared in his hand, a short-handled knob with a shiny three inch blade.

  Deceitful bitches, was the thought in his head, I’ll cut your secrets from you.

  Something caught his outstretched arm, a heavy pressure that encircled his wrist and ground his bones. He gasped, the knife slipping from his senseless fingers, and he watched it tumble down. Its blade pierced the tabletop, cutting one of his cards.

  Ralph heard Vilmo’s knuckles pop as the butcher’s fist struck his face, and then the image of the knife through the King of Diamonds vanished as his world went black.

  XXII

  It was raining, and a curtain of gravid clouds obscured the mosaic of the stars. Deke lifted his face to the sky and let the water caress his face. He opened his mouth and let some of the chilly rain drip onto his tongue.

  “Interesting game,” the Poet said, remaining along with Clio and Whitcombe under the narrow shelter of butcher shop’s rolled awning. He was trying to light a cigarette from a shaky match, and Whitcombe finally offered the writer his lighter.

  “Who’s fault is that?” Clio asked.

  The Poet’s mouth crooked around the cigarette, and he sucked his cheeks in innocently as he made the lighter’s flame dance.

  Mistral stepped into the rain beside Deke. “Got somewhere to go?” he asked. “We can find you a place to stay if you need one.”

  Deke shook his head. “I’ll be all right.” His hand drifted to the right hand pocket of his coat. “I might treat myself to a nice room. Maybe something that looks out over the water. I think I can afford it.”

  He reached into the other pocket of his coat and brought out a folded piece of paper. Without opening it, he held the page out to the Poet. “This is yours,” he said.

  The Poet sucked on his cigarette. “Keep it.”

  Deke shook his head. “It isn’t mine.”

  Whitcombe stepped forward, the shadows fleeing from his face. “I’ll hang on to it,” he said. “Until he changes his mind.” The rain started to darken the sleeve of his coat.

  Deke hadn’t meant to let go prematurely, but somehow the page wasn’t in his hand any more, and Whitcombe’s thick fingers were closing on empty space. The wind, twisting the page away from both of them, whisked it down the street. Whitcombe, grunting and stumbling, gave chase. The page fluttered like a lost moth, losing altitude as each raindrop added to its weight. It landed in the narrow stream of the gutter where it spun for a second before being carried away, rushing downhill towards the edge of the city, towards the starless waters of the bay.

  “How long you do think he’ll chase after it?” Deke said, as he watched Whitcombe pursue the piece of paper.

  “It’ll reach the bay eventually,” Mistral said. “If he doesn’t catch it first.”

  “It’ll float,” Deke said, glancing at Mistral. “Unlike other things.” He heard a woman’s laugh, and it was just an echo but he knew from where in his heart it came.

  Mistral nodded slowly. “But what keeps it afloat?”

  “Does it matter?” Clio asked from the shelter of the awning. “Isn’t the idea that it could enough? Is there enough wonder left in the world to keep it up?”

  “No,” Mistral said with some care, as if he was afraid of the consequences of the words he was about to say. “There isn’t. There has to be a reason. There has to be.”

  The Poet was hidden in the shadows of the deli’s eaves, and the red glow of his cigarette gave nothing away.

  But Deke was pretty sure he was smiling.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mark Teppo is the author of The Potemkin Mosaic, Lightbreaker, Heartland, and Earth Thirst. When he's not subverting genre conventions, he is the showrunner of the Foreworld Saga, which includes the three volume historical adventure epic, The Mongoliad. He is a synthesist, a trouble-shooter (and -maker), a cat herder, and an idea man. His favorite Tarot card is the Moon.