A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain (20 page)

Ursie didn't remember how the men arrived, if they filed in one by one or arrived in one great swell, if they were joking like kids let out early from school or tense like men whose wages would be diminished by the fires as surely as if they'd stayed and fed it five-dollar bills. Or were they simply bored and restless? Who decided the players? Who notified each with the room number, specified the monies necessary to enter this particular game? Not a high-stakes game, no. Not intentionally. But no one would be taking chits here either. Cash. Cash. Cash. Come with your pockets full and your wits about you.

And suddenly they were there. She could hardly believe the moment had arrived.

She had spent most of the late afternoon in Keven Seven's room, practicing. He wouldn't let her clean, but demanded they get to work at once. Work? Whatever that was.

To clean, Ursie wore her usual clothes—jeans and a T-shirt—and over that, a polyester smock with the P&P's logo, a bunch of scrawny pines in front of a cluster of jagged white lines meant to evoke snow-covered peaks, emblazoned over a breast pocket. The smock didn't fit quite right, the sleeves not quite making it all the way down Ursie's long arms. It was a little tight, too, across the chest when it was all buttoned up. But Ursie didn't mind too much. She liked that the smock was long enough and equipped with numerous generous-sized pockets where she could stash clean rags and spray bottles of cleaner so that she wasn't always hopping back to the cart. The color, too, that deep forest green, did nice things for her eyes, she thought. Let alone that she liked the feeling the smock gave her, of belonging to something other than her family. She felt . . . official. So she was more than a little shocked when Keven Seven leaned across the bed in Room 18 and began unbuttoning this uniform of hers.

It's distracting,
was all he said.

But what could be more distracting than his smooth hands creeping down the front of her body, slipping buttons free one by one, the edge of his thumb running down the center of her chest, between her breasts, as he finished.

Begin again,
he said as he swept the smock from her, not seeming to notice it was his attention that made her stumble, numbed her fingers, and clouded her vision. She had to wait until he sat again, cat-faced and pleased in a chair across the room, thumbing the rubber band on a little bundle of bills, ready for the game.

The time she had spent with Keven Seven that afternoon could not, she realized, be measured. No way could she have learned the lessons, heard the multitude of tales he delivered in allotments of Time.

A hundred combinations lined up before her. A thousand variations. Whole worlds unfolded.

And more:

Listen,
he said.
Watch.

Here is the game of lost souls whom, he said, first played it on the threshold of Paradise: the game of the condemned ones. A game, it was said, that could bring the devil to Earth to collect his winnings.

Some believe it was a clear bargain. The losers gave up their souls,
Keven Seven told Ursie with only the slightest suggestion of a smirk.

The truth is the game began as a refutation of heavenly power, commissioned by a famous king whose kingdom was nearly brought to ruin by gaming. He had no choice, that king. His subjects left the grain in the fields to rot. They ignored the plaintive desperation of unmilked cows, the blanketing stench of shut-in livestock, and kept dealing, one hand upon another. Even the courtiers were in trouble, down to rags some of them; they'd wagered so dearly. Worst of all was the queen, who would gamble anything on the prospect of a better hand, as if she could alter her life without consulting God or even her husband. She slipped from her bed each evening, back to the servants' hall, out to the court galleries, anywhere a game might yet be found.

The king went to the cardinal for advice. “Your kingdom is going straight to hell,” the cardinal told the king. His subjects had chosen Luck over God, Chance over Fate. The king issued an edict: all gaming must halt. Searches were carried out and cards were destroyed in the public square—pomp of ceremony, bonfires, threatening speeches—but it did no good. His courtiers found other ways to gamble. Eyeing up a cavernous window, split into a hundred leaded panes undulating with light, the courtiers speculated on the number of flies landing on a particular wavy pane within a defined and measured span of time. They laid bets with the flicker of eyelashes, a sideways rub of the nose. The king's spies were at a loss.

A multitude of such games erupted: Who would sneeze first and for how long? On what day and what hour would the royal nephew take his first step? Odds were given on the slightest suggestion. Conversation became impossible, laden with innuendo and the risk of speculation. Not a card in sight and still his kingdom was slipping away. When his own wife grew so distant she would not dare raise her eyes or turn her head, not even blink when he called her name, the king capitulated.

Paradise had already been lost, he decided. What hope had any of regaining it? Forget God! He wanted his wife back. He called on an expert to create a new, even more seductive, game to win her, one that they would play together. The winning card: a portrait of the two of them bound together in the fires of hell, because, truly, hadn't they already taken up residence in that cursed parlor?

Ursie could nearly see it before her, the card Keven Seven called
La Condemnade: The Last Couple in Hell
.

And then, just like that, the card was gone, and she was intent again. She might as well have been alone on the river, making conversation with the wind that skidded between the rocks and made the river jump and froth and the fish bunch closer together. While her hands flew and the cards danced a jig, Time for Ursie rambled and became an old person's gait, slow, meandering. She watched each card claim a place, noticed its companions, conjectured the deck itself into sets. She shuffled and flipped again; the cards were showing off for her now, preening to show their true faces even when turned away from her. That startled even Ursie.

“Oh,” she said aloud.

Had her hands ever been so smooth? They were working hands, chapped and careworn before she was nine. But now . . . how beautiful. The skin like caramel. Her shorn nails, whole and glistening.

Perfection,
Keven Seven applauded.

He was crouched beside her now, and the word entered her right ear with a little hiss that made Ursie shiver.

Oh how well he knew her! Better than anyone. Better than Jackie or Tessa or Leo or even Bryan. Far better than her father. Almost as well as her mother. Her mother. Ursie tried to conjure her face, but failed. Instead, only Keven Seven's unknowable features drifted before her, until finally he swept up those teasing cards and said,
It's time. It's time.
The dance was about to begin.

For all the weeks she'd been working at the Peak and Pine, Ursie had never actually seen the swamp of grizzled men who called it home. Boisterous at first, claiming places at makeshift tables, sizing up their mates, their eyes skittered past her as she sat, Sunday school straight, on a hard-backed chair against the wall like a hulking refugee waiting for her number to be called. Keven Seven just another fellow in the mix, looking surprisingly unexceptional.

He'd told her to wait until they were all there and ready. And so she did. She'd put away her P&P smock, replaited her hair, stiffened her spine. At the last moment, once the men were seated and quieting, she simply rose and stood behind the last empty chair, enduring the men staring at her. In an ordinary game, the deal would shift from player to player, each choosing the game, but whether it was the careful arrangement of the chairs, the sealed packs set before one place only, the unaccustomed quiet as the men gathered together, it was clear from the start that this game was to be more formal and directed. Even as questions and complaints formed on tongues, Ursie slipped into the chair, broke the seal on a new pack, and began. A rude remark, half-uttered, morphed into a guttural murmuring that rumbled into the room, settling into the empty corners as Ursie began the shuffle.

They couldn't keep their eyes off her hands, of course, and yet what did they see? Dazzled, they struggled to stay with the game, to remember where they were and with whom. The expert counters among them twisted numbers, skipped and recalculated, reduced and revised, until their heads were swimming and they were hopeless in a game for which they'd lost the rules. The veteran cheats, too, the ones who practiced sleight of hand and feigned losses, discovered the usual tricks weren't working. Cards wouldn't flutter to the floor but stuck tight to a hand as if to force an actual move—a call, a fold, a quick burnt exchange in which the player always lost, the new card even less obsequious. Four men tried to remember original rules and basic strategy even as the game itself began to pick up speed.

In waves, the men recovered a little. Beer bottles and flasks appeared to refill plastic glasses. A smoky haze hovered above the room, but Ursie was too intent on her own tasks to notice its origin. The marching of the cards, the dance of dispersion and reconfiguration into the holding of hands, was following the routes she'd learned in Room 14. Her own hands were swift and sure. She did not deal from the bottom of the deck like a crooked dealer. Her fingers picked and chose, awarding each man a singular selection, chosen just for him, all the while, the deck stayed steady beneath and gave the illusion of a simple, straightforward deal as if the fish were arriving on a conveyor belt, laid mouth to tail, one right after another, instead of rising and falling in a constant overlapping stream. It was beautiful, really, how Keven Seven had taken her great gift and adapted it to this singular game. She would have chortled if she could. But not everything was working as planned.

And then Keven Seven made an ace appear where none had been before. Ursie knew this. She knew every card she dealt and the Ace of Spades should still be in the deck under her hand. While players studied their hands and debated silently, Ursie stole glances toward Keven Seven, but he wouldn't look back. He had told her, more than once, that even the slightest glimpse between them would be perceived as collusion.

Look at nothing but the cards. Look at no one,
he'd said.

His last bit of advice involved the cold bottle of Diet Bubble-Up beside her.

It will keep you steady,
he told her.

And Ursie, who did not drink or smoke, who purposefully averted her eyes from the stacks of crumpled bills Bryan unloaded from his pockets after an afternoon by the school playground; Ursie, who had made deathbed promises to Junie, to stay straight, did not question the open bottle Keven Seven handed her, their fingers interlacing briefly, memorably.

The ace bothered her; it did. Briefly, she felt mutiny flutter beneath her hands, a different sort of energy. In the corner, a man was praying, begging God for relief from one smashingly bad hand after another. He might as well have been cursing. His laments—could no one else hear them?—puckered the air as much as if they were obscenities. Raising her eyes slightly, she caught Keven Seven's satisfied smile.

She sipped. And sipped again. And again. A tart blossom opening brazenly on her tongue. And the bottle stayed cold and full and irresistible. Despite a growing heaviness in her fingertips, she threw her head back and dealt another hand.

Albie had kept track, noting the men drifting down the corridor, up the stairs, the heady stink of growing sweat. He'd caught the room number with some surprise—he hadn't realized the entertainer knew any of these fellows—and made it a point to get Vincent in at the desk right away, so that he could make the rounds, listening at the thin door.

It was the quietest goddamn game he'd ever heard. He wondered if he'd been mistaken about the room number, but then a fellow had emerged with ice bucket in hand, and he'd heard the faint rumble behind him, the clink of bottles, even the faint but definitive skip of the cards.

Albie slowly recognized the man at the ice machine as French Bert, a burly fellow with a faked hearty laugh that belied the meanness in him. He wasn't laughing now. He wouldn't even look at Albie. Sweat had matted his thin hair to his scalp. He shook his head a few times as if to clear it, touched a fistful of ice to his jaw.

Well, it must be a hundred degrees in that room, Albie realized. Even if they had brought more fans inside, that many men in such a confined space, all of them sweating—sounded like hell itself to Albie. How long would it be before the ruckus began? The first cry of cheating or welching? How long before they realized that someone—always someone and never Albie, thank God—was taking a cut? How long before he'd have to race inside and push the fight outward so that when the police finally did arrive, it wasn't to the sight of an illicit card game but only another parking lot brawl?

Oh, the whole town was on edge, feeling the far-off booms, choking with each breath. Each year, it seemed the fires got worse. Each year, a debate began over whether they'd finally reached the breach, the end of the world. How could you blame a group of lonely, ever-aching men, nursing scars and raw stomachs and shared insults—how could you blame them for taking a few hours of play, dreaming of that big win that would set them up far away from these troubles? Albie didn't, of course. He didn't blame them at all. If in their shoes, he'd be the first one in that room, a full bottle by his side. But he had other responsibilities and what Albie truly wanted then was for these exhausted, fantasizing men to tuck themselves into bed and dream their dreams of new trucks and new lives, ditching wives for girlfriends, backbreaking work for a crack at the more ambitious. He wanted all this striving mess to sleep.

He walked a circle around the Peak and Pine, counting cars, taking note. A dead animal was splayed in the back lot's north corner, a victim likely of the tow truck Mitchell Flacker had sent along for the stolen Toyota. Albie would send Vincent out with a shovel in the morning. The entertainer's van was missing. Fellow like that probably capitalized on times like these, creating a necessary diversion. Despite the heaviness in the air and these few incongruities, all seemed under control to Albie for the moment—until he rounded the last corner and encountered Madeline Bone fast asleep behind the wheel of her old car.

He banged on the hood and shook his head as Madeline snapped awake, wiping the drool from the side of her mouth with a practiced gesture. His arms flew upward in exasperation. Slowly, she unrolled her window, her eyebrows narrowing with irritation.

“When you gonna let that girl leave today?”

Ursula. She should have been long gone, he knew, and what reason had he to believe she wasn't, but even as he told Madeline as much, he too felt a jolt of disbelief that, coupled with Mitchell Flacker's recent visit, made him deeply uneasy.

“Is she in some kind of trouble?” he asked her.

“Ursie? Ursie in trouble? What did that fellow tell you?”

“He was looking for her, that's all. Wanted to know what she looked like.”

Madeline hooted. “He don't got eyes?” Even as the words left her mouth, she felt, rather than remembered, Keven Seven's gaze, and Albie watched Ursie's ebullient aunt fade into a sobriety that he recognized as also belonging to Ursula.

“We got to try his room,” she said, fully awake now. Albie could hardly keep up with her as she half ran back to the motel.

“Wait on!” he yelled at her. “His room? Mitchell Flacker doesn't have a room here.”

“That police fellow? What's he got to do with the fellow in Room 14?”

He wouldn't have recognized her. Her careful braid had come undone. Her blouse was unfamiliar, a sheer red, unbuttoned right down to her surprising (and shocking) cleavage. Madeline ignored the men, the cards, and went right to Ursie, pulling her to her feet and instigating a tug-of-war, because just as suddenly one of the card players was on Ursie's opposite side, holding her back, forcing her back into her seat.

“You,” Madeline said, recognizing him.

“He gave her something too,” Madeline said to Albie, remembering Tessa. “Look at her eyes. Smell her.”

Ursie's eyes were unnaturally bright and very still, but that might have been from all the attention that had been turned her way, Albie thought. Or not.

“She's working for me,” the card player hissed, and it was only then that Albie recognized him as that slight entertainer, beefier now, more muscular. His grip on Ursie's shoulder tightened.

Albie leaned close to the girl and said, “You're leaving now.”

Ursie's brilliant gaze ascended toward Albie, then as Madeline waved a hand in front of her, her chin tilted in her auntie's direction as well. Slowly, they watched that artificial blaze wane as Ursie came awake. Her hands dropped to the table and the cards she'd been clutching spilled free. And still Keven Seven held her. She could feel it now, the pinch by her collarbone, the way his touch compressed the whole left side of her as if her heart were failing. Her eyes went first to his hand, that long-fingered white hand, claiming her air. It seemed skeletal against her brown skin, so ordinary and worn now, and made her shudder. She hardly dared to look up at Keven Seven, and when she did, she did not recognize the man.

The other men were also coming awake, grumbling now in the sweltering room.

“Hey, come on now. Let's get back to the game.”

“What is this?”

“Who let the squaws in here anyway?”

To Albie: “You'd better check her pockets before you let that girl go.”

“She took money off me.”

“Hell, she took money off all of us.”

“And him?” Albie said, pointing to the entertainer. “What about him?”

But none of them could remember Keven Seven doing anything other than holding his own hand, losing with the rest of them.

“Well, who's running this game, then? The girl? You had the girl running your game?”

They didn't know what to say to that. What they remembered began well after the first cards had been dealt.

Albie nodded at Madeline, who, bless her, understood at once. She pulled at an unresisting Ursie, upending her pockets, patting her down.

“Not a cent,” Albie said. Still he knew what was coming.

“Get her out of here,” he commanded Madeline in a low voice. “The two of you—out!”

The door scarcely closed behind the two young women before a roar erupted, each man suddenly certain he'd been scammed and someone—was it Albie?—had engineered and profited. An upended chair flew against the window. Drunk and hot and stripped clean of wages, the men couldn't help but fight. The women hurried down the back staircase and into Madeline's old car, which seemed to start on its own. They raced out of the parking lot, neither of them daring to look behind to see if they were being chased. If they had, they might have glimpsed Keven Seven, calmly descending the stairs behind them, ambling into the smoky evening, even as one satisfying crash after another sounded above him.

• • •

For the second time that day, Madeline drove to her late sister's house and unloaded a nearly insensible girl. Ursie waved off her aunt and staggered to the porch.

An uncommon nastiness was running through the girl. She wasn't herself at all. When Madeline tried to bring her inside, Ursie flicked off the hand on her shoulder and scowled.

“It's our place. Mine and Bryan's. You need to go away,” she said.

And when Madeline, well-used to drunken rantings, persisted with her help, saying, “Sweet girl, let me just get you inside,” Ursie shook her off so hard she sent her auntie reeling, tripping down to one knee, all the while that glittering shard in her eyes.

“Go away,” commanded Ursie. “Beat it. Scat! Leave us alone.”

So Madeline, her nerves ragged, took off. This time, she was not too rattled to glance in her rearview mirror, and she couldn't help but notice how the porch door lay on its side as if ripped straight from the hinges. She couldn't help but tut-tut to herself—those children so brazenly holy about her sister's inheritance, her own Uncle Rainey's old place, and meanwhile, the house falling into bits and pieces. Her tut-tutting amused her in spite of herself, and by the time Madeline reached the main road again, she was cackling with amusement and relief. She'd saved the girl. At least she knew that. And Ursie would remember too, once she came back to herself and Bryan was home and all their friends around them again and all these goddamn fires were out.