Four Letter WordsAudra E. Westemeir

In one hand she held a smoldering cigarette, while the other lay coiled around the stem of a martini glass. The gentlemen seated before her were playing their game; dickering and bargaining, tossing an odd assortment of goodies into the pot. It was always interesting to see what they would play for. Everything from antique knick-knacks to modern technologies no doubt pick pocketed off of their latest victims. Rarely did she see anything worth the fuss the players put up over winning the prizes.

She grimaced at a few of the items that came across her table. Werewolf pups were the latest fashion; looking all too much like little children, frightened and doomed to a dark fate cleaning up the table scraps of their specie’s worst enemies. She had no particular affection for werewolves, even young ones, but her mind played tricks when she saw them cowered and whimpering. It was then that she stepped into herself and closed off the humanity that cared about children and puppies. She shut down the most basic part of herself and kept dealing cards.

Tonight one such unfortunate soul had been thrown in the mix: a blonde-headed boy not a day over five sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, picking absently at the leather dog collar wrapped tightly around his neck. He was a pretty thing—unusual for a werewolf—and he had soft brown eyes that watched everything around him; everything except the simple card game deciding his fortune.

“I call.”

She had tuned out the bantering of the players until she heard those words. The end of the game drew her back to reality, back out of herself. She raised the martini glass, nibbling an olive and watching while the men revealed their cards. It was a crapshoot. Not a one of them had a hand worth betting on. Only a respectable-looking gentleman seated to her left had any better than a pair of eights, and he seemed to share her disgust at the pathetic bunch that had turned out tonight.

He shook his head and began scooping his winnings into a cloth bag he had concealed beneath his coat. There was no argument from the others, only scattered grumbling and hisses of irritation while he bagged his items and snatched the leather lead attached to the werewolf pup’s collar.

“I suppose I’ll have to find some use for you,” he grumbled at the puzzled little boy as he rose from the table. In the midst of his frustration he muttered, “Evening, gentlemen,” by way of farewell before he parted their company.

The men grunted and turned back to the dealer as she swept up the spent cards and reshuffled the deck. She was left with the unsavory dregs of society, and she wondered what they had left in the form of wagers for the next game. At so early an hour she hardly expected the chair left by the last game’s victor to be filled. But no sooner was she ready to deal than did another man slide into the seat beside hers. He placed his hands atop the wooden table, reaching with one for the lipstick-stained cigarette the dealer had left to smolder in the ashtray.

He took one, long drag from the nearly spent cig before and tossed the butt on the floor to be ground out under his boot. He did not wait for any acknowledgement from her to speak. “Chadwick said I’d find you here.”

She did not reward him with a response; she dealt out five cards to each player and laid the remaining deck back down. The men lifted their hands and arranged, rearranged their cards. In turn, they discarded one, two, or three cards and she replaced them. Same as the game before; same as any other game on any other night, but this time all eyes turned on the most recent addition to the table.

“Why’d you leave?” he asked, oblivious to their impatience.

She did not answer, instead she glanced up at him with deck in hand. “How many?”

He scowled and scooped up his cards , thumbing through them hurriedly. “Just two,” he muttered after examining them. She handed him a pair and he slid them alongside his original three. He laid them down again and returned his attention to the dealer.

“Because of me?”

She frowned despite herself, fidgeting with the deck. She knew the other players were staring at her and the spectacle that the man beside her was making of himself. Most of all, she knew that they were suspicious, and a hint of favoritism on her behalf could be grounds for drastic action.

When she replied she did her best to do so discreetly. “The world doesn’t turn because you tell it to, Connor.” She did not look away from her cards, but she could feel his eyes following her. She laid out a few cards in front of her, toying with them, trying to make a few simple sleight of hand tricks more interesting to wary onlookers. “And it’s been years since I’ve taken you into account before making my decisions.”

“If I’d stayed you’d be right there with me.”

The others at the table were growing rapidly more frustrated with what appeared to be a sloppily concealed scam, one which they were to no doubt receive the short end of. Connor had to have noticed by now, but he made no effort to assuage their doubts. He had turned in his seat, his attention entirely focused on the dealer.

“That’s why you left,” he concluded, and before the dealer could answer the burly fellow seated next to Connor snarled at both of them.

“Are you gonna wager something or just sit there and yap?”

The dealer saw anger flicker in Connor’s dark eyes, but rather than reply he dug down in his pocket and fished a small, metal object out. When he tossed it on the table, she got a good look at it: a platinum band set with a trio of square cut black diamonds. A man’s ring, clearly, and she knew it to be the symbol of the union that had drawn Connor into another life nearly a decade earlier.

By way of confirming what she had deduced, the dealer glanced at Connor’s left hand and found it bare. For the first time that night she raised her gaze to meet his, and it was he who looked away.

“That ought t’be worth somethin’,” he said, and the other players seemed to agree as they fawned over it and tried it on their own fingers, no doubt assuming he had picked it off of one of his victims.

She supposed she pitied him, if for only a moment. If Connor were a lesser man, she would have assumed the negligence of his wedding band was a request for a sexual favor on her part, but for all the things Connor was not, he was a gentleman, and he had never once committed an adulterous act behind the back of a woman he loved. That interpretation aside, she had to conclude something was amiss.

But none of that meant she had to be nice to him about it. “That is why I left,” she gestured to the bauble. “Not because of you. Because I had no more hope to hold onto.”

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