Bluff

the thriving horde from my lonely sofa—it all made me want to reveal myself to her. But where would I start? I couldn’t tell her about Ace, and meeting Ellen, and the poker game, and how what began as the prospect of a magazine article had become something else. I couldn’t tell her about the Greek deal or the money Ellen and I planned to take. Whatever I said would require more, and then more still, filling in the gaps about who and why. But tomorrow the sun would rise, and I didn’t want Harley—who was not my friend, because I had never taken the time to become hers—I didn’t want her carrying around my burden. She had agreed to take my birds, and I was grateful.

“Thank you,” I said, glancing away so she wouldn’t see my eyes suddenly welling up.

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said. “They’re animals. I take care of them. It’s what I do.”

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” I said. I thanked her again and left her apartment for my own, which felt all the more stark. I returned to the loveseat and picked up a fresh pack of cards. The last one. I pierced the plastic wrapping with my fingernail and removed it, opened the top flap, and slid out the deck. If the magician was a good magician, the false deal was a near-silent, frictionless glide of card against card. A distant ice skater making wide circles over a frozen pond. A bird lifting itself into the sky. Card handling was softness, lightness. Without that, there was nothing.

I hoped I hadn’t told Harley too much.

I looked up at the poster of Cardini. I watched him watching me. Easy for you, I thought, suddenly angry at the long-dead magician. Your wife was your fucking assistant. You could tell her anything.

The way to handle nerves was extreme preparation. My Greek deal wasn’t quite there yet, not up to my standards, but I was getting closer all the time, and morning was still several hours away, and I was stone sober and a fast study and the owner of two remarkably capable hands.

I went to bed as dawn approached and tossed long enough for sleep to feel like a hopeless goal—though I must have slept because I dreamed of the house in Plainfield and awoke to the fading echoes of my father at the piano banging out a beer-induced, over-the-top version of “Band of Gold.”

Ellen wasn’t arriving until six that night. That left the whole day. Outside, it was gray and ordinary, with no indication that a new year had replaced the old one. I settled into routine activities: I cleaned the house, picked up a few groceries at the mini-mart. I practiced the Greek deal. I repeated the name I would be using until it sounded natural. Hi, I’m Nora Thompson. I’m Nora Thompson. It’s nice to meet you, Victor. I’m Nora Thompson. And I repeated Ellen’s, as well: Emily Ross. I practiced the Greek deal some more. I walked myself, step by step, through the evening, picturing the game table, where to sit, what to say and do.

Ellen arrived at my house precisely at six. It had been snowing lightly for the past hour. The forecast kept changing. Now they were saying we might get a few inches. But, crucially, Ellen had called me on the drive over and assured me that the game was on.

Her eyes widened, taking me in. “Wow, love the pixie cut.”

“All in, right?” I said.

She smiled and came into the house. “I’d say you look exactly like a Nora Thompson.”

Ellen’s light brown hair had a stylish wave to it, and she had traded her trench coat for a denim coat bordered with faux fur the same color as her hair. It was unbuttoned, and underneath she had on a black turtleneck. She wore flowy batik print pants, and no jewelry, and little enough makeup and lipstick that most men would assume she wasn’t wearing any. She truly was the embodiment of Emily Ross, hippie millionaire and rebellious heiress.

I had dressed in a classy but casual outfit of royal blue top, dark blue jeans, and tall black boots.

“Please,” Ellen said, handing me a small canvas bag with palm trees on it, “don’t lose this.”

I unzipped the bag. Inside were two rubber-banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills and a third, smaller stack.

“My own bag is in the car,” she said. “Not that I don’t trust your neighborhood, but how about we get going?”

“What exactly are you implying about my neighborhood?” But I couldn’t pull off the casual humor. My whole body was shaking. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and went to the bedroom for my purse and a last glimpse in the full-length mirror. I stuffed the stacks of bills into my purse and we left the apartment together.

The sun had already gone down, but the streets were lighter than usual because of the snow, which fell softly, no need for windshield wipers, and made even the ugly storefronts look like a painting. On the parkway, closer to the shore, the snow became a heavier sleet. As Ellen drove we both tried to stay calm, stay cool. We talked a bit, running through the plan we already knew so well. I listened to the rhythmic whip-whip of the windshield wipers. And then, so fast, we were exiting the parkway and getting closer to those rising, winding Highlands roads.

Ellen slowed the car and went just past Victor Flowers’s driveway, where several other cars were already parked, stopping at the curb in front of his home, which, as it had all those years earlier, stood curtained behind a row of high hedges. She left the engine on, and together we sat in the dark, listening to the car’s low idle and the irregular drumming of sleet against the windshield.

The dashboard clock said 8:22.

“Are we really going to wait another three minutes?” I asked, just as the clock changed