Speed

There’s nothing smoother than a well-used deck of cards, sliding between your fingers as if they’ve been oiled. I can shuffle without looking down at the cards, using my eyes to stare down my opponent instead – a trick that’s taken years of practice. 

“Do you remember the last time we played?” she asked, fingers toying with the stem of her wine glass. Her eyes are nowhere near mine, gaze pointed downward, face blank. Her golden necklace shimmers, four rings across both hands gleaming. Dressed up, even at a little restaurant like this. 

I don’t reply. Well, I don’t want to reply. But the silence stretches, and she does not meet my eyes, and so I finally cave. “Well, I don’t think you and I have ever played before.” 

She does not smile, exactly, but her eyes gain a flash of recognition. “That’s right,” she murmurs. “You and I never played on that trip.” 

“No, Grid, we didn’t.” 

She looks up at me, sharply. “What did you call me?” 

“Nothing. Here, take it.” I place her half of the deck on the table before her, and adjust the 7 central cards arranged between us. Two open slots for creating piles, three cards on either side for refilling. Clean. Simple. 

She takes her cards one-by-one off of the table, rearranging them into a semblance of order as she goes. I do not pick up my cards and merely place my hands, palms down, on the table with a thud. 

She looks across at me, meeting my gaze steadily for the first time all night. “You’re not going to prepare?” 

I shrug. “I never do.” 

“Not true.” 

I don’t smile. I don’t. “Well, for cards, at least.” 

She smiles, though, indulgently, and picks up her deck. “Of course you don’t.” 

We sit in silence; the only sound is her hands on her cards. I do not look up, but I know what types of motions she is making. Hypnotically slow, that’s how she’s always moved. Unless she was sneaking out of her motion-detector-protected home at night, and then, well…she was like the wind.

“52 cards in a deck,” she says suddenly, making me jump. She fixes me with a stare, and I can’t help but look back, just for a moment. “Nearly half are in my hand.” She looks down at her cards, then back up at me. “Guess which one I’m looking at right now.” 

I don’t look back at her, staring down at my chipped nail polish on the dark wood of the table. “You always liked playing games.” 

“Playing?” 

“Winning. Kindergarten spelling bee, 9th grade prom queen. Oreo.” 

She taps her glass with a finger. “You flatter me.” 

“Shall we begin?” I finally ask. 

She taps her glass again. “Begin what?” 

“The…card game?” I tap my fingernail against the backs of one of my cards, still face-down on the table before me. 

“Oh, that game.” 

I place my hand over one of the central cards – the starter card for one pile. She places her hand on the other and looks up at me. “Three,” she says. 

“Two,” I say. 

“One,” she says, and I flip my card. But my elbow flails wildly, and I hit the side of her wine glass. Red wine sloshes onto the floor and onto her light blue ripped jeans, faded in a store-bought manner. 

“Well,” she says.  “Still clumsy, I see. Clumsy in class, clumsy on the softball team, clumsy on the school trip. Clumsy now.” 

She does not say this as if she is being insulting. She says this little speech as if she is practicing a monologue for a play, as if she is a character in someone else’s dream, as if she isn’t awake but neither is the listener.

I laugh. “Well, sure. I’m sorry, let me call over the waitress, see if they can get you another glass. You barely touched your last one.” I signal to the waitress, who had already been watching unobtrusively anyway, and she nods before darting away. Of course the waitress had been watching. Who wouldn’t watch Grid? 

Grid shrugs, but she had caught the wine glass, right before it fell, and it’s still in her hand. She always had fast reflexes – it’s how she won all of those softball games. She takes a sip of the last drop of red wine sloshing in the bottom of the glass, before placing it down. Daintily, she opens the napkin in her lap, covering up the stain on her jeans, and props her chin on her fist. 

“So, tell me,” she says teasingly. “What did Little Miss Clumsy ever do when she grew up?” 

I resist the urge to make a fist with my hand and instead let it lay flat on the table. My palms sweat, sticking a playing card to my skin. “I’m a scientist – a chemist, actually. I create things. Drugs, household cleaners, foot creams.” 

She smiles, but this smile seems more genuine. I know better, though. I know how a sweet smile can hold nothing behind it. I can see that her eyes remain blank. Empty. 

“You called me my old softball nickname. Grid. Can’t believe you still remember that,” she says softly.

“Well, of course. You were always so good. Steady. Mapping the field with your eyes, longitude and latitude, dividing the field into quadrants. Organized.” My eyes flick down to her designer jeans and white flowy shirt. “Well-dressed.” 

“Nothing wrong with an eye for a nice outfit,” she says cooly, but I notice that she shifts slightly in her seat. Perhaps a layperson wouldn’t have noticed, but I know her. 

“I’m not playing anymore,” she continues. “I’m a club promoter now. A lot more important for me to look good, you know.” 

I nod. “Nice.” But I am surprised. Club promoter. Huh. I never saw her as anything but a girl on the pitcher’s mound or on the field, the center of attention. A leader, never a follower. 

The waitress comes over with the new glass of wine, apologizing profusely and offering to bring more wipes for Grid’s jeans. Grid smiles graciously, thanking her, before dismissing her in a smooth social maneuver that only she could perform. 

Grid turns back to me. “So, you’re a che–” and it happens. It happens so fast that I don’t have time to react, to school my expression in any way. When she slumps over, her head bouncing on the table so hard that cards go flying everywhere, I can’t even scream, as I’d planned, or call for help. Maybe even go into hysterics–no, nothing. I just say her name, over and over again. “Grid? Grid, I–Grid?” 

The waitress runs over, but by then it’s too late. I can tell that Grid’s eyes are blank for the last time. The ambulance comes, sirens wailing. 

At some point in the chaos, I reach across the table and flip over her set of cards. I don’t know why, I swear, but when I do, two Jokers stare back at me. I had forgotten to take them out. I slump back in my seat, feeling silly. 

When they finally take her away, the ambulance lights make a pattern on the wall, but I can't quite decipher it. Then again, I never had her eye for aesthetics.