And then Regent, red-eyed Regent, the devil, put his cards up right close to his face, right where you could see the bottom of his irises and nothing more. I could imagine him smiling wide behind his five-card-stud with his cheeks all puffed out to his pierced ears. His pasty pale white skin was stained black on the tips of his ears, just that smidge above where they were pierced by those circle piercings that made a hole that you could stick a thick pen through. Not one of those office-man's pens or the kind you'd keep in your pocket, all quick and speedy with the smooth flows. But like the kind of pen that you might be given by some greedy shit with his logo smeared across the side. Clip and all. Of course, not that I'd use a clippy pen ever. Don't have any suits or dresses to pin it onto or one to do the pinning.

But yeah, Regent was just staring out from behind his deck with the little blue and green stripes on the backs, pulling up his legs in front of him all like he might if he was cold, but if he was cold, he'd just pull on the leather jumpsuit of his that was so tight. I mean, he's already wearing gray sweatpants for his legs, sitting on that jumpy of his, but yeah the only reason he'd pull it on would be to cover up his shoulders, wearing that black tanker of his.

I'm not cold either though, see. I'm in a black shirt and black sweats myself with the little and big black tatty bands on my right arm, just that smidge above the elbow. Regent just the week after he got the pen-hole-piercings insisted that I do it too with his style but I slapped him up and told him 'fuck no' and he'd been asking ever sense, the devil. But then when Ursula saw Regent with his pen-hole-piercings she turned to me and said 'ey Zyolfe, that looks great. I think I might get 'em too' I had to say 'might as well' being the odd one of us out. So now we're all three really holey, we three there in the ears.

And I might as well say now that Regent's actually Regent Lynchin, Ursula's actually Ursula Utkin and yours truly happens to be Zyolfe Snowviss. But of course, I just call him Regent and when I'm feeling pretty intimate or conversational with her, I call her Yuyu.

And so Regent was sitting there with his cards in his face and his white hair falling right down to his eyes and his black hands gripping his cards, his arms graying their ways up to his white shoulders and his tanker. So I finally picked up the cards that he had dealt me and looked at 'em. There was up front and in my face the eight o' hearts, but Ursula always liked to call 'em thumpers instead of hearts. I put that at the back of the stack and there was the two, the fucking two, yes the two of clubs. I did what Regent was doing and sort of hid my face behind the cards and put the devil's two at the back and saw the queen and the eight o’ diamonds, which made me happy, and then the last card of the five was the duke of spades, but all the ados like us liked to call it the 'dick of spades' instead.

So seeing the two of the same suit, I took my free hand and threw a pistachio into the middle of our little gray blanket that we were sitting on, making a total of eleven in the middle. It wasn't much of a bet, sure, sure, but I just wanted to get it going and let him know that I had at least something, but not tell him what it was. See, Regent was really bad at keeping his cards to himself, so I like knew that he was holding a really good set, especially when he threw in his match and then a counter of five more. See, that's how he liked to get you, not betting much and then reeling you in with more and more until he had you by the balls. But I'd been playing well tonight, bluffing and calling everything really well and was up fifty pistachios against him. So to keep him on the toes, like, I threw in another five pistachios to even it all out at twenty-two.

Then while I was waiting for him to trade in some cards, after I had done mine, I looked around at the alleyway. I mean, it wasn't much, just that little space between block housings, but they had just recently had it lit, so now Regent didn't have to race over here during his lunch breaks to play and we could just wait till night. Sure it was a bit dirty and loud with the radiators and pipes and things, but hell, can't really beat it for privacy.

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So then when Regent had finally finished I look at my new cards and slowly bet him up and call his throws because I knew that I had him this time. I kept the duke and the eights and picked up the dukes of spades and clubs too. And when the dealing and betting was done, Regent put his cards down, holding 'em under his foot that he had in front of him and leaned back on his little black hands. And then you could really see that little pink scar on the side of his white neck that his maman had given him that one day when she was just so dead drunk. I mean, it just makes it so much funnier that Regent's now a worker at the local mead plant yeah. Like four guys died there last year, so like the whole injuries around the stuff just seems funny with his experiences.

From there he had a quick laugh at my spiky rat's nest of black hair, calling it 'dumb as dogshit, the style, that one', swishing back his hair to the right side of his face.

“Hey, if you want ridiculous, you, just look at your eyes!”

“What about 'em?”

“You got 'em reddened, and that's some dogshit styling.”

“Hey, natural blue doesn't suit either of us.”

“Or Marie, from across the way.”

“Neither! So-”, his mischievous grin coming back, “you wanna call this one the last hand of the night?”

“It's a good idea. Ursula wants to see me, at least just to check if I'm alive, before I turn in.”

“Yeah, I'm boxed up for tomorrow in work, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“You sure Ursula's not already turned in? It's gotten past midnight already.”

“Oh she'll be up till two making sure I don't try to sneak in and skimp out on fixing the cables for her morning emissions. Connections got all fucked up again and she's been trying to watch her shows all day, and I've figured out what the problem was just before I left to see ya.”

“I have to say it's a great deal though, getting to live there so long as you do all the work and make all the meals and hang around such a hot chick in the meantime.”

“Not my style.”

“Well, she isn't Marie, eh?”

“Very true, you devil, you.”

“What kind of girl would you want?”

Then all sorts of words crashed into my head, slamming against each other like disjointed and terrifyingly off chords of bassists in a clash. Introverted, extroverted, calm, feisty, submissive, dominant, small, tall, fashionable, hopeless, stupid, brilliant, dependent, confident, silent, wild, sylphlike, insane... “Uh, alive.”

“Heh. Should we finish the hand?”

“Sure, sure.”

Regent lifted up his little sandaled foot and pulled out those cards, which he flipped over. I could see the first four, two red thumpers: the six and the seven, and then the two black sevens too. The one card that was buried was fished out and he showed me the six of spades.

Knowing that I had won, I distracted him with a comment on his footwear.

“Why are you even wearing sandals anyway? It's still winter, you know.”

“It's getting warmer!”

“But sandals and a jumpy? That's some dogshit fashion there, you.”

“Oh shut up, you, and show those cards!”

I dropped on his stack the pair that I had and then shoved the dukes in his smirking face, saying, “All holes filled, you devil, you! Three dicks.”

“Cunt fucking damn you, Zyolfey. I thought I had it. My best hand of the night.” He threw up his hands and laughed, sliding his lost pistachios over to my side of the blanket, making sure to do it in a disorganized shit of a push, scattering them all around me.

Regent stood up and collected his pistachios into his little pouch and I folded up the blanket with mine inside, tying a little knot with the corners to keep all the little nuts in place. “Hey man, it's been good.”

“Yeah it has, Zyolfe.”

“Take care, you devil, you.”

“And to you, man.”

We gave each other a quick hug and patted our backs before Regent stepped into his jumpy and I pulled on my gray and teal hood and sleeves and trekked it out into the breezy winter air. It's not like it was cold or anything, just really windy which brought the cold with it, yeah. And so I crossed the park and the ice-flowy river that went right through that to reach the side where Ursula had her place all set up and decked. The building was big and gray and dull like every-fucking-thing else in this town and inside was even darker. There was this big meshed off shaft for the elevator which didn't lift shit now and these times, and the stairs that went up and around that were littered, especially with gum so you had to jump steps sometimes cause there wasn't a clean place to step it and you didn't want to get all that shit on your feet. And on the third floor was that door of hers with the little silver placard on the front that had a little bear on it for, of course, Ursula.