Dark Matter by Brett Adams Page B

7-stud. A handful of spectators cradled
drinks and commented on the play. He knew he couldn’t count either game. Both
were played from a single deck. He relaxed and waited to feel at home again in
his own flesh, steeping in the room’s hum.
    Consequently he didn’t recognise the
synaethesic sensation when it returned. It tugged at him like he needed to pee,
and he had risen to search for a toilet before it occurred to him what it was.
    He sat again, brow furrowed, and
concentrated on the 7-stud game. The first of three cards, 3 rd   street, was dispensed in a fresh round, making
two down and two up for each player. As the bets began to fall, he felt the
familiar flutter of heft. He hunted for the source.
    He found it, not in the cards, but the players .
    Another card was dealt face up to each
player, 4 th   street, and again for 5 th   and 6 th . Bets fell on each, getting heavier
as the dealing progressed. It was as the last card, the eponymous 7 th , was dealt,
and the final bets were placed, that he had a disconcerting sense of inversion:
the amply-proportioned blonde festooned with gold jewellery felt light as a
feather; the wiry man sporting handlebar moustaches and a zirconium-inset ring
felt heavy as a whale.
    This tangible sense of two strangers
disturbed Rasputin. Beyond that, he wondered if he had finally split the bag
and spilled his marbles.
    The hands were sprung. Goldilocks won big,
Handlebars picked his teeth, and the feeling of weight all but evaporated from
every player.
    Rasputin ran his hands through his hair and
rallied his spirits. By nature, he wanted to investigate, to uncover the why of
it. But it was late. He was tired, tipsy, and queasy. He had also just
witnessed the lady rake in over $300 in three minutes.
    He bought into the game.
    The first round came and went without any
unusual sensation. He kept his head down, and folded in the 4 th   on fish food. Another hand passed, and he was
beginning to wonder whether he had wasted more money when, on the fall of 3 rd   street, Handlebars’ stocks plummeted. The
sensation was much stronger now, charged by his investment in the game. He
turned over his card, the Ace of Diamonds, and Handlebars and Goldilocks both
gained fifty pounds. The fourth player, a quiet, elderly gentleman in a grey,
Sunday-best suit conservatively folded.
    Rasputin tossed chips onto the table,
upping the ante. The others followed. 6 th   and 7 th   cards fell, bets were placed, and Rasputin
felt as if he were a sideshow strongman lifting a barbell of human flesh,
Goldilocks and Handlebars each to a side. He bet everything. Goldilocks folded,
and Handlebars saw him.
    With the slightest tremor in his hand,
Rasputin flipped over his hidden cards, which included the Kings of Spades and
Hearts. They made, together with those already exposed, three of a kind, Ace
high. Handlebars grimaced, scratched at his gingery two-day growth, then
flipped his cards. He had called what he thought was Rasputin’s bluff on two
pair.
    “You’re in the game, young blood.”
    And so he was, to the tune of $500.
    On cue, Radio Rasputin aired Kenny Rogers’
Gambler. But the chips he clawed to his chest sure felt real, and eminently
countable.
    As the game continued he gave his gut the
reins. He lost on occasion, but more often got it right. At the back of his
mind he chewed over how this new mode of intuition worked, and bit by bit the
answers came.
    He was still mining probability, but this
was a much more lucrative lode. Unlike blackjack, 7-stud rounds draw from a
single pack, which renders card profiling pointless. But there is one complex
of information that accumulates with time: the profile of a player .
Perhaps he registered nuances of posture and expression, but that wasn’t
necessary. Each new card evoked a response from every player, fold or bet, and
if betting, the amount. Each card supplied another piece of data, dependent on
the preceding cards and those of the other players.