A twenty landed on the pile of bills before me. At my right, Daniel Aulone pushed his palms against the rim of the table and leaned back in his chair.
“Your call, Miles,” he said.
His words were the first spoken in over an hour. A lot of heat had come off the last hand. Between Daniel and I, it had been close. Only a difference of four points. We had played the kind of spades where it didn’t matter if you were in 3rd or 4th place, as long as you could spectate.
I reached over to shake his hand.
“Good game, buddy,” he said, without looking up from the table. “Good game, guys.”
By then, a couple more bills were on the deck. Some refilled their glasses and lit another butt. Daniel, who had drowned three Millers before we started, opened a fourth. He took a long draw from his butt, and the sickly sweet scent of tobacco filled the air.
“Your call, Miles,” he said again, this time between heavy breaths.
Across from me, a guy with crisp ash blond hair and teal eyes laid out an ace. The game began.
“Lay off, Danny,” he said. “Try closing this one up and starting dry.”
It wasn’t that he had lost. Daniel could take a loss. Games didn’t get to him the way it did some of the other guys.
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