Page 116 of Throwing Shade
“Yes. I’ve meeting someone who should be able to help me. This will all be over soon, I swear.”
The cards fell to the ground.
“It’s only just begun.” Emmett spoke in his dreamy voice, his eyes replaced by the swirls of the cosmos and starlight.
“What has?” I said.
“The game.”
Jude leaned in close to his face. “Strong showing of magic in both eyes, no stuttering in his pronouncements,” she murmured. “I don’t understand why it isn’t consistent.”
I smacked her leg, because now was not the time for a tech survey. “This better not be more domino bullshit.” Or about Tatiana. Were my fears valid that she was playing me? “What game, Emmett?”
His gaze went distant, then he blinked and shook off his trance. “Game? Gin Rummy.” He picked up the cards and shuffled again.
I ate another bite, the sugar mixing uneasily with the dread in my stomach. What was the point of free will and changing my mazel if there was always some other prediction? How escapable was fate? Had I merely altered certain events, but my larger destiny was still in play? Were we born into a kind of cosmic stream that swept us along some grand path, where we could choose whether we used a front crawl or a backstroke or floated along hanging on to a piece of driftwood, but that current was ultimately a one-way predetermined trip?
Or was everything up to chance and personal skill, in which case our mazel was changed with every decision we made? Maybe destiny was no more than a set of birth conditions, encompassing everything from genetics to the kinds of parents we had and the environment we were born into, and then it was up to us to take those and make something of our lives.
I rejected any notion that my life had been mapped out. If mazel was anything, it was a wake-up call that I’d gotten complacent. That’s it.
“Shake it off, or it’ll do your head in,” Jude said.
I rearranged my cards. “Don’t worry. Nothing will distract me from helping you.”
We played a few super competitive rounds, replete with a lot of accusations and laughter. If it had a manic tinge to it, well, we could be forgiven for trying too hard to forget that the sands of the hourglass of Jude’s life expectancy were slipping away.
Jude nudged the bakery box at me. “You going to offer one to the wolf?”
I laid down a run of four diamonds. “He knows where we are.”
Emmett picked up a card. “He’s a grumpy asshole.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I like him,” he added.
“And I’ve attacked him twice and he hasn’t retaliated,” Jude said, peering at her cards with her one non-swollen eye. “He’s even fed me, watered me, and given me bathroom breaks.” She pointed at the folded blanket and pillow in the corner. “Brought me those.”
“That’s basic jailhouse conditions. Gin Rummy.” I lay down the rest of my cards.
Emmett declared he’d had enough and hopped his way back into the main room, taking the cards with him.
I lay my head on Jude’s shoulder. “Did you sleep at all?
“I hyperventilated into a brief fainting spell.”
“A disco nap. Nice.” I stood up, one hand on my lower creaky back.
Jude sat with her legs in a V-formation, stretching over to touch one foot, then the other. “Take him the last bar, Mir.”
Pacing around the elevator, I ticked items off on my fingers. “He got to kill a dybbuk thanks to me, I undid Zev’s compulsion on him, and he’s been paid in full. Our business dealings are squared away. No pastry necessary.”
“He’s really gotten under your skin, huh?” Jude brought her legs together and leaned forward, touching both toes. “Good. You need someone to challenge you.”
I tried to mirror that while standing but my fingertips dangled uselessly at mid-calf, and my legs burned. “Annoy and challenge are not the same thing.”
Jude pushed the bakery box at me. “Give the nice man who brought me clean clothes the damn pastry, Miriam.”
