Grace and Ral laugh as I give Billy a little punch to the arm.
I walk lockstep with them through the clearing and try to relax, to block out everything else and just enjoy the night off with my team.
*
After supper, we head back to the warehouse. There’s no electricity, so once the sun goes down, our only lights are cigarette butts shared around the room. It looks like a field of fireflies, glowing embers blinking and burning through the wide, long space. Our days are long, hard, so soon after supper, most of us hit the sack, then rise along with the sun glaring through the tall warehouse windows.
But some nights, like tonight, there’s a restlessness in the air—a collective charge of electricity, magic—and folks’ll stay up chatting, scheming in corners, some of the shine drinkers even brewing a quick batch of sorcerer’s shine with a water jug they smuggled from dinner, in an attempt to ease themselves into sleep. Me, Grace, Billy, and Ral—we play cards with Grace’s faded, dog-eared deck by the light of candles we conjure for these types of occasions. As usual, we’re playing poker, the only circle of ours where magic’s not allowed. Found that out the first night, otherwise you’re in for a tying game of royal flushes.
“Hate to bring it back to business,” Ral leans in and whispers, “but we really need to figure out our next step.” He looks at Grace as they exchange three cards. “You get any better sense of when the end of Gunn’s ‘experiment’ might be? And what’s in store after?”
Grace frowns as she studies her cards. “Hardly ever near enough to Gunn to mine into his thoughts,” she tells Ral, “and when I am, he’s hard to breach. But from what I can gather from his thug-puppy, Dawson, Gunn will end this soon. Dawson’s been thinking constantly about this shining room, the Red Den. I see a wooden door sign, this two-story space with stages, a crowd where little glasses of shine are being passed around.” She looks up at us. “Dawson’s got a bare-bones imagination, and the images are clear, almost pushy. I’d say any day we’re looking at the finish line.”
Ral shows his hand. “If you’re right, Gunn will need to force the issue, force seven of us to team up.” He shakes his head. “It can’t come to that. I’m not going home to Marla and my boys empty-handed. I want to approach another team and make an alliance now.”
“With who?” Billy puts two queens down with a flourish, and I toss my pair of twos into the center. “Stock’s trio of shine junkies and sibling-humpers? Or those quacks from the Carolinas? I don’t think there’s a lesser of two evils in this situation.”
Ral says, “You know there has to be.”
And Ral’s right, of course. We need to choose. I size up our alternatives.
Stock, Tommy, and Rose sit against the back wall of the warehouse, puffing spirals of smoke to the ceiling, deep in the middle of their own hushed conversation, that dull, grayed-out, post-shine-trip haze about them. Rose quips something into Tommy’s ear. Her brother laughs, low and sultry-like, which breaks me out into all sorts of uncomfortable. But on the other side of the warehouse, the Carolina Boys are playing with fire, literally—each of them passing a palm-sized ball of flames around their circle of four, until one of them decides to mix things up, burst the ball, and burn the hands of the passer, like a high-stakes, sadistic game of hot potato.
Ral’s comment hangs there, unaddressed, and I realize it’s been silent for a while. I look back at my team. Ral, Billy, Grace—they’re all looking at me. “What’s your vote, Joan?” Ral whispers.
And something I haven’t felt in a long time rises up inside me: a sense of doing well. Of mattering. Fact, it’s such a warm and wonderful feeling that I force myself not to take the memories of Mama and that night down off their shelf, like I always do whenever I feel a shade of self-satisfaction.
“We go with Stock.”
“Stock,” Grace repeats slowly, looking at me curiously. “The Stock who’s teased and taunted you from the moment you walked in the door. The guy who’s been throwing insults our way every time we rub shoulders with him.”
“We don’t have the luxury of holding grudges,” I say. “First, look at those Carolina Boys. They’re burning themselves. That the sort of fellas you want to be teamed up with, heading into a gangster den to perform cutting-edge magic?”
“But—”
“Two, if we try for the Carolina Boys, we still have one extra man if Gunn insists on walking away with only seven to achieve the strongest troupe,” I interrupt her. “What happens once we’re eight? Does Gunn pick the one who goes? Do we vote?” I look around at the trio encircling me. I don’t want to leave their sides. “No, we stick together. Allying with Stock’s trio lets us do that. It’s the only option.”