Chapter 7: The Ring

I put the corner down and kept my hand flat on the card.

There was no lower card in the deck.

If I did nothing for twenty minutes, I would be dead on the floor of the casino where I used to work.

If I took somebody's card, I'd be handing them the two and walking away.

Then they would have to do the same thing to somebody else, or die holding it.

The bell kept ringing over the dead slot floor.

I took two steps back from the table, until the velvet rope touched the backs of my legs.

From there I could see every pair of hands.

That was the whole job, for ten years.

You don't watch faces in a casino, because faces lie.

Hands tell you what the face won't.

Five peeked at her card, and her shoulders dropped an inch.

"Oh, thank God," she said out loud, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.

Three peeked and grinned, and then tried to stop grinning and couldn't.

Eighteen's hands were shaking, but they'd been shaking since the vote.

The whale didn't even look at his card.

He'd sat at this table a thousand nights, and he flicked his corner up, bored.

One held his card under his palm and smiled at all of us.

Six put his card face down and didn't touch it again.

Then I watched Twenty-One.

He peeked at his card with his thumb.

His face didn't change, but his right hand went straight to the gold ring on his pinkie.

He turned it once, and then again.