They chose this town because it minded its business.
Low ceilings. Wet air. A marina that smelled like diesel and rancid popcorn. The kind of Gulf place where men lost boats, found religion, and did neither properly. The poker room sat above a bait shop called Live & Let Live, which felt optimistic.
They were here for the cooler.
It had been taken in what Hank described as “a shystery maneuver,” which was not a word but carried emotional truth. Now the only way to retrieve it was to win the invitational tournament run by men who ironed their jeans and used the word “proprietary” in casual speech.
So they practiced.
A small table. A single bulb. Humidity so thick the cards curled like old photographs. Grace curled with them.
“Hands above the table,” Beau said.
“I am above the table,” she muttered. “Spiritually.”
“Physically, Grace.”
Hank nodded solemnly. “Not everyone we play will be as sweet as we are.”
Grace squinted at him. A week ago, she had believed Hank was a mango character living inside MJ’s brain.
“Hank, we didn’t even think you were real.”
“And yet,” he said, spreading his hands, “taxable.”
On the lacquered bar cart behind them stood Jean-Paul.
Taxidermied peacock. Former conversation piece. Formerly abducted over the Gulf in a beam of light that hummed like a broken refrigerator. Returned three hours later with one cracked glass eye and one new eye that pulsed faintly, like it had swallowed a lighthouse.
The new eye was awake.
Beau rose casually and adjusted the bar cart an inch to the left.
“A little more,” Hank said.
Grace lowered her cards. “Are you two positioning a bird like it’s a satellite?”
“It is a satellite,” Hank replied.
They had tested this.
The live eye did not merely reflect. It interpreted. When someone bluffed, the pupil tightened to a sharp black pin. When a hand was weak, the iris dimmed. Strong pairs produced a slow, tidal glow, as if the Gulf itself approved.
It did not always show the truth.
But it showed something.
“Cheating,” Grace said.
“Corrective accounting,” Beau replied.
“The cooler was acquired through shystery,” Hank added. “We are restoring balance.”
