“What’s this?” Jake asked, holding the card between two fingers and staring at the dealer.
The dealer barely glanced at him, not very interested in getting into it with some gambler, local regular or not.
“You said hit you,” she said.
“Yeah, but I meant a real card,” Jake said, slapping the offensive piece of waxed cardboard back down in front of her. It lay staring up at him with garish colors. On the face, a tower cracked wide open, hit by lightning from a dark and swollen sky and, come to think of it, the thing looked kind of familiar, like those cards Nancy kept on the bookcase and used to tell him things he never believed. What were they called? Terror cards. No. Tarot.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the dealer, and shuffled, dealt, round the table again.
Jake glanced at the people next to him, an older woman, here alone, two guys on his other side, engrossed in their cards and beer, occasional conversation.
“This is one of those Tarot cards,” Jake said, flinging it back.
“Are you out of the game, sir?”
Jake squinted at her name tag, which seemed to read “Nancy.” “No.” He brushed the cards against the table and the dealer tossed him a card. The game continued.
Jake picked up the new card. The tower put him over anyway. Sixteen. A sixteen? He thumbed the card the dealer had just slapped down. Death. Unlucky thirteen. Jake’s hands started burning.
“Don’t go out tonight,” Nancy had said. “It feels wrong. It doesn’t feel lucky. Please, for us,” clinging to him, trying to hold him back, and behind her, looking frightened, Kelli looking on, her nine year old eyes big.
“But I’ve been so lucky lately.” Not pleading but this was for them. It wouldn’t go on forever, this lucky streak, and the instant he started to lose, he’d quit. But in the meantime, the winnings were paying off medical bills and credit cards, and paying, just maybe, enough into a high yield fund they’d be able to buy a house in the next couple years, get out of the duplex and into a new house where everything worked, where the pilot light stayed lit and the carpet wasn’t stain-colored.
Another card slapped down in front of him. He couldn’t remember motioning that he wanted one. He glanced up at the dealer again. “Kelli,” her name tag read. The casino around him seemed silent, dreamy. Jake looked over his shoulder at the lights flashing, coins falling from slots, people’s faces, cocktail waitress raising her brows at him, was she wanted? He shook his head, looked back down at the card.
Hanged man. Number twelve. Didn’t put him over, but this was crazy. He closed his eyes. Could he remember anything she’d ever told him about the cards? Twelve. One plus two equals three. Three of them at home, Jake, Nancy, Kelli. One of the big cards in the pack, like a king or queen, a face card, weighed in more than the others. And somehow this one was dangerous, too. Something involving the three of them.
It wouldn’t come.
Motioned for the dealer to hit him.
Sudden cards. Too many. Jake started as they pattered the felt in front of him. The world card, 21 right there, the world staring up at him with Nancy’s face, Kelli’s.
Lovers, six, pointing out at him, his face and Nancy’s, entwined, together, crossed with Judgement and the Fool. He looked up at the dealer, her face blurred out of focus and her name tag reading “KN.” His hands motioned and the cards pattered down, the chariot, and death, and the Wheel of Fortune.
Jake stared at them.
He’d quit the minute he started to lose.
No way was he going to lose it all.
He looked back at the dealer and gasped at her face, a twisted corpse-face, burned beyond recognition, only the name tag readable.
“Wife and Daughter.”
Jake ran.
“What’s his problem?” one of the guys asked.
The man next to him shrugged.
#
He burst through the door, into the cold of the duplex, and smelled it right away, too sweet, cloying, an instant headache of gas fumes. The pilot light gone out again, and the fumes were strong and coiling around his face as he ran, past Kelli’s parrot, lying upside down in the cage, feet curled, head limp, past the living room and bathroom and back to the bedroom where Nancy asked “Whaaa—” sleepily and collapsed around his neck. Dragging her to Kelli’s room, still breathing but he could barely rouse her, dragged them both, not willing to put one or the other down, out into the fresh cold of the night air, coughing, spitting, walking the two woman who were his world while the cards swirled through his head and the lucky streak continued.
#
He went back to the casino a week later, after they’d had the landlord fix the heat and had filed a report and were actively seeking another place. The same dealer, and tonight her name tag read “Tanya” and it didn’t surprise him at all. And it was still there, after all, the lucky streak. He still felt very lucky. Picked up the first deal and stared at the cards, motioned against the felt: hit me.
Tanya/Nancy/Kelli flicked out the first card to him.
Ace of Coins.
©2009 Jennifer Rachel Baumer
Jennifer R Baumer lives, writes and runs in Northern Nevada with her husband and best friend Rick and a household full of pushy cats.
