She squeezed both her hands tightly. She felt like Oeufcoque was speaking the words with her.
She felt Oeufcoque wrapped around her clenched fists, ever so soft. The Doctor and Oeufcoque: always on the lookout for her, sensitive to her feelings.
“Now, let’s go and win. And as soon as we win, we run away,” the Doctor said. He smiled confidently and headed closer toward their objective. The table.
“Here we are—our battleground!” He spoke in a different voice now, loud enough for all others in the surrounding area to hear. The first salvo had been fired.
The table had just taken a pause in between games. The dealer looked up from the cards that he was shuffling and smiled at the Doctor. He had silvery blond hair and green eyes. His every movement was calm and composed, and he continued shuffling uninterrupted even though his eyes no longer looked at his hand.
The Doctor placed his hand on the back of one of the seats—the middle one of seven—and called out to the other punters, “May I?”
“Oh, rather! We were just itching for a
But the Doctor stood there for the moment, hand still on the back of the chair. “We wouldn’t want to interrupt the flow of the cards, you see.” He spoke like a complete beginner and sought approval from the other players.
“Oh, it’s all the same to us, and we wouldn’t want to get in your way,” continued the lady with a laugh. Then she nudged the old man next to her. From her actions it was clear they were together. The old man nodded to the Doctor to welcome him too. He was a skinny little thing—a sprig of parsley next to the fat sausage of the woman.
The next man along took his eyes off the cards for a moment and looked at Balot and the Doctor in order to welcome them. This man sported a mane of lush black hair and wore a fashionable monocle over one eye. He seemed to be considering how the addition of the Doctor and Balot would affect the cards.
The three players already at the table all sat to the right of the chair that the Doctor had just chosen. The monocled man’s seat was the furthest to the right of the semicircular table, and this seat was known as “first base”—it was the first seat to be dealt the cards. By the way he sat on the edge of his seat, waiting for his cards to come, it was safe to say he was a complete addict living in a world of his own.
In their training, the Doctor had explained that you could tell a lot about a blackjack player’s personality from which seat they chose. Now that Balot had seen it in the flesh, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world.
The Doctor responded to their pleasantries in kind and took a seat, and Balot did the same.
“What a delightful young woman,” said the lady. Her face was friendly but she couldn’t hide her curiosity.
Balot dipped her head, and the Doctor answered for her. “Yes, my beautiful young niece has been entrusted to her uncle today for safekeeping.”
“And you’re entertaining her with cards?”
“Yes. Her father and I are in agreement that young people should be exposed to this sort of thing at an early age. Her mother was unsure, but I convinced her by explaining that a person who knows how to play cards knows the meaning of the word ‘perseverance.’ ”
The Doctor gave a knowing smile.
“Perseverance,” the woman repeated, and her smile grew even more friendly. It was as if she had wanted someone to say that word aloud. “I couldn’t agree more!”
Her large frame wobbled, and she prodded the shoulder of the old man next to her. He shrugged his shoulders and joined in. “And composure,” he added, waggling his finger.
The monocled man next to him joined in too. “And wisdom and bravery,” he said with a broad grin.
Balot was growing a little weary of all this grandstanding. The Doctor was a born con man, surely, able to swindle his way into any place. He could manipulate the mood of a gathering just like that. Or perhaps this was what the Doctor was really like back in the day when he was a decorated researcher. He continued to ingratiate himself into the present gathering, preparing the way for Balot’s debut in society, taking on the role of entertainer while the shuffle was under way.
