15. Rhodes
FIFTEEN
Rhodes
Hairline Cracks: Plaster cracks constantly, and most of it means nothing at all. The same wall and the same width of line can also mean the ground beneath the house has moved, and only a trained eye will tell you which one you are looking at.
Ford shoulders through the door first, because Ford always shoulders through the door first, a case of beer in one hand and his mouth already going.
"Whose truck is blocking the driveway? I had to park on the grass like an animal."
"That's the roommate’s,” Nash says behind him. "Rhodes-y is playing house with Coop's little sister."
"Not funny, Nash," I say. He doesn't say another word.
Sully and Deuce come in together, arguing about something that happened at weight lifting, and just like that my house stops being mine and becomes the frat house, the way it does whenever I host poker night.
Somebody drops onto the couch and starts flipping the TV channels while Deuce lifts the lid off the top pizza box, inspects it, and takes a slice before he's even set his keys down.
"You got the good one," Deuce says with his mouth full. "The one with actual meat on it."
"There are three boxes, you savage."
"I know. I'm claiming this one."
They sort themselves around the table, with Sully insisting on the seat by the window and Ford telling him that tradition is for people who win. I stack the chips and let the noise roll over me. This part I could do asleep.
Tallulah's door opens down the hall, and she comes out barefoot, in a James Taylor T-shirt and cutoffs, hair shoved up off her neck. She doesn't check the room or wait to be told it's fine. She crosses straight to the open chair between Nash and Sully, pulls it out, and sits.
"Deal me in."
"Oh, hell yeah." Deuce grins around his pizza. "Tilly Maybank. You just upped the value of Poker Night by a factor of ten."
"Watch out, D. She says she's good," I say with a laugh, pulling out my chair.
"Our boy said you're going to take some of my money," Deuce says. He thinks he's being cute, but he sounds ridiculous. She's way out of his league.
"Rhodes was being generous. I'm going to take all of it." She reaches across the table, flips open the second pizza box, and slides out a slice like she's one of the boys.
Nash laughs. "You want a beer, or —"
"Water's fine." She says it flatly, no story attached. Nash just nods and doesn't make it a thing. I love him a little for that.
"You always played this loose?" Sully asks her.
"I grew up with Coop. You learn to bluff, or you learn to lose."
That's the whole introduction. Nobody needs more.
They already know exactly who she is, whose sister, whose people, and she settles into the table like a stone dropping into water and closing over.
Deuce is already telling her about the last hand he lost, and she's already telling him it's because he counts cards out loud with his lips moving.
Ford loses it, and she has been in the room ninety seconds.
I pick up the deck and shuffle once, then twice. The cards are perfectly crisp under my thumbs, and it’s oddly satisfying as I watch her steal my pizza in my chair at my table.
She fits. That's the part that gets me.
"You dealing or fondling those?" Sully asks.
I set the deck in front of Deuce.
"You deal. I need my hands free to take your money." He cuts the deck and starts sending cards around the table.
Two hours in, the pizza boxes are empty, and Ford's stack has shrunk to a sad little pile he keeps rearranging so it'll look bigger.
Tallulah leans back in her chair, arms crossed, watching the flop hit the table. She hasn't touched her cards since she picked them up. That's the thing I keep noticing. She doesn't fidget. She watches, doing the math on everybody else's faces.
It hits me she'd clean out Keller's tables. Not this, the real ones, the invitation-only game uptown where the city's best liars sit down to lose their shirts to each other. She'd walk out owning the room.
Ford bets big. He does that when he's got nothing and he's hoping to buy the pot.
"Careful," Sully says. "She's got that look."
"What look?" Ford asks.
"The one where she already knows what you have," I say.
Tallulah smiles at Ford, slow and sweet, and pushes her whole stack in. "All of it."
Ford's throat moves. He stares at his cards, then stares at her. She looks bored, which is the tell she wants him to read, and he reads it exactly the way she planned.
"You're bluffing."
"Then call me."
He doesn't. He folds his ace-high face down, and Tallulah rakes the pot in without turning her cards over, without a word, without one ounce of sorry on her face. Deuce howls.
"She had garbage. Ford, she had garbage."
"You don't know that."
"Look at her. She's not gonna show you. That means garbage."
She stacks Ford's chips into a neat tower in front of her and pats it.
"Weep about it," she tells Deuce, and slides half of his over to join it.
"I counted those cards," Deuce says, wounded.
"With your lips moving. I told you."
Nash reaches into the case without looking, cracks a beer, and slides it down the table toward the open spot beside her elbow because that's where an empty hand is.
My hand twitches. It's already halfway up before I catch it, before I make it lie flat on my knee under the table. I don't say anything.
She flicks it away with two fingers, easy, eyes still on Sully.
"Get that away from me, I'm working." She reaches past it for her club soda and takes a swallow. "Sully, quit smiling at your cards. You look like you found money."
"I'm not smiling."
"You're beaming."
Ford laughs too hard at that, longer than it earns, leaning toward her, and something in me sits up and wants to plant a flag.
"Deal," Deuce says, and shoves the deck at her.
She passes it across to me. Her fingers cross the back of my hand on the handoff, and it goes straight through me. I don’t react, keeping my face neutral while I take the cards despite the racing of my heart. She's already telling Ford that his tell is his ears going red.
I shuffle. I want to reach across and put my hand on the back of her neck, but of course I don't. That's the whole game now, wanting the simple thing and not taking it.
Deuce checks his phone. Sully counts what's left of his stack and groans.
"I counted cards and still lost," Deuce says.
Nash stretches. “I still owe you forty, don’t I?”
“Yep. Pay up,” I say.
Nash pats his pockets as if the money might've grown there since the last time he checked. "I'll get you. Venmo."
"You said Venmo last month, and I’ve still yet to see a Venmo from you.”
“I’ll get on it.” He claps my shoulder on his way up, and that's Nash paying his debt, a promise and a hand on the shoulder.
Ford's already at the counter, lifting the lid off the third box to find the last slice sitting there alone.
"Nobody wants this?"
"You touch that, you're dead," Deuce says, but Ford's already folding it in half and eating it standing up. Deuce is all talk, shaking his head like the whole night has been one long personal insult.
"I lost seventy dollars," Deuce announces to the room. "To a girl who wouldn't even show her cards."
"You lost seventy dollars because you play like you're at a birthday party," Tallulah says. She's still in the chair, chin on her hand, watching them scatter. "Come back next Monday. I'll take the rest."
"That's cold."
"That's math."
Sully lingers by the door, jangling his keys, because Sully can never just leave. "Best two out of three next time. I had bad cards all night, so I have to cut my losses."
"You had bad cards because you kept smiling at the good ones," she says.
"You're crazy."
"Ford, back me up."
"You did smile," Ford says around the pizza, and Sully throws his hands up and finally goes. Not long after, they're all heading out, the slow shuffle toward the door, jackets, phones, one more thing somebody has to say.
"Night, Til," Nash says.
"Night."
The door shuts behind them.
And the house drops. That's the only word for it. The noise just falls out of the room all at once, the way it does when a fan cuts off and you didn't know it was running. My ears ring a little in the quiet.
The table's a wreck, cups everywhere, chips scattered across the felt, cards face-up and face-down, the two boxes stacked crooked.
There's no audience left, nowhere to put my eyes that isn't her.
"They're terrible," she says still seated, stretching her arms over her head. "You know that, right? Genuinely bad at cards."
"You've been running your mouth for two straight hours." I start gathering cups. "One winning night and you're insufferable."
"One?" She grins. "I'm always insufferable. Tonight I got paid for it."
I stack a cup inside a cup inside a cup. The room was easier full. The noise gave me cards to deal and Ford losing his mind to watch, somewhere to put all of it.
Now there's just the two of us and a wrecked table and the hum of the refrigerator.
I clear the napkins and fold a box flat.
She pulls her phone out to check the time.
I notice the change in her body immediately when she goes still.
It isn't the sleepy kind, or the bored kind.
Every part of her stops at once, eyes locked on the screen, and I know before she says a word that it has nothing to do with poker.
"Tallulah, is everything okay?"
She doesn't answer. Her thumb moves on the screen, and she keeps reading, her eyes tracking back to the top and starting over like the words might rearrange into something better on the second pass.
"Tallulah, what is it?"
She stands, the chair scraping back, and she's on her feet with the phone pressed to her ear. I set down the cups I'm holding because whatever this is, it's bigger than a mess on my table.
"Dad." Her voice is thin. "Dad, I just got an email from Miss Ada. What the hell is going on at Oak Moss?"