Then I saw the poker table, the back of my body, my arms, my hands, and then it was us, our game, as viewed from behind me and slightly overhead.
What was higher than high definition? This. I couldn’t believe how clear the visual was, and how large everything was on the screen. Victor had started playing the video, and we watched the prior hand unfold. He forwarded the video and we played the hand at triple speed. He slowed the video again as Victor, on the screen, reached over to cut the blue deck for me. The men staring at the TV screen were motionless and unblinking. They were watching my hands on the screen. I watched myself reach out and complete the cut. I watched myself square up the deck and shift to my left. I began to deal.
Ian, Danny, Jason, Ellen, Victor, me.
Ian, Danny, Jason, Ellen, Victor, me.
No one had said anything during the deal, and I’d forgotten there was sound on the recording until I heard Victor utter that one, horrific word: Wait.
He pointed the remote control and the screen and the video paused.
“So?” he said.
“I saw it,” Danny said.
“What did you see?” Victor asked.
“Something. I definitely saw something. Like you said—when she dealt the cards to herself. It was different.”
“What about you guys?” Victor asked Ian and Jason.
“Maybe,” Ian said.
Jason nodded. “I’m pretty sure I saw something. But I couldn’t tell you what it was.”
“Play it again,” Ian said.
Victor rewound the video in play mode, and we watched the cards float away from the table and back into the deck of cards in my hand. I swung my body to the right, placed the deck on the table, uncut it into two halves. He pressed play again, and the men watched, transfixed, as I dealt the two hole cards to all six players. Victor paused the video again.
Jason said, “I can’t tell you what she’s doing, but it was something. It was like a—a blip.”
“Victor, you saw it that time, didn’t you?” Danny asked.
“I think I did.” He turned his head to face Russell. “What about you?”
“Play it again,” Russell said with no emotion. The pressure on my arm increased.
“Can’t you do that in slow motion?” Danny asked. “Like frame by frame?”
“Yeah,” Victor said. “That’s a good idea.” Once again the cards flew up from the table and inserted themselves into the deck, and I pivoted and placed the deck on the table. Time then moved forward again on the screen, but at a pulled-apart, glacial pace. The ten seconds of dealing must have taken well over a minute. The men in the room turned to statues, leaning forward in their seats, gazes fixed on the screen, determined to catch this new addition to their game, this stranger, this potential enemy among them. I couldn’t blame them. Had I been them, I would have stared at the screen—at my long, high-def fingers—with the same ferocity. I saw something, Victor had said, and now they were all seeing it. And from where I stood, with Russell’s eyes fixed on the screen and his fingers fixed to my arm, I could see myself deal the hand yet again, too—not that I needed to; I knew what I had done—and I could see them seeing their suspicions confirmed, and with only the smallest turn of my head I could see the bar with its top-shelf liquors and the poker table with its duplicitous chandelier and the seagull painting and the sanderling painting and the heron painting. I could see everything, and it all swirled around me, and my heart raced faster as the enormity of what was happening hit me with full force.
When the slowed-down deal was over and Victor paused the video again, it was Jason who broke the silence.
“I saw it that time,” he said. “It was like a—”
“Like a hitch,” Ian offered.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Like she was pulling her own cards out of a different place.”
“So we all saw it?” Victor asked.
“You’re damn right,” Danny said.
“Russell?” Victor said, turning around again.
Russell said to his boss, “Doesn’t sound to me like you need a tiebreaker.”
“What about you, Emily?” Jason asked. “You’re being awfully quiet.”
Ellen was standing beside me, but not quite as close as before. “Hey, I …” She tried again. “I don’t …”
“No one’s blaming you,” Victor said. “But I want to know what you saw.”
She had to agree with them. To deny it—to be the sole denier in the room—would only implicate herself. We knew the plan going in. We knew the risks. We’d discussed them and agreed to them. If the plan went south, there would be no defending each other. Defending each other would only make us both look guilty.
“I’m really not very good at spotting that sort of thing,” she said.
“You watched the tape three times,” Victor said, any remaining patience having drained out of his voice. “I’m asking you what you saw.”
She glanced over at me and then back at the screen even though the tape was paused, frozen on a shot of the cards already dealt, the two hole cards in front of each of us, simply another poker hand about to start, one of many, one that could be nothing special or that might contain the key to everything.
“I don’t know,” she
