When I was done playing I’d go find some action, women, or cards, usually. And that was it for the rest of the night. Damn Eric, anyway! That reminds me again… He once accused me of cheating at cards, did you know that? And that’s about the only thing I wouldn’t cheat at. I take my card playing seriously. I’m good and I’m also lucky. Eric was neither. The trouble with him was that he was good at so many things he wouldn’t admit even to himself that there were some things other people could do better. If you kept beating him at anything you had to be cheating. He started a nasty argument over it one night — could have gotten serious — but Gerard and Caine broke it up. Give Caine that. He took my part that time. Poor guy… Hell of a way to go, you know? His throat… Well, anyhow, there I was in Texorami, making music and women, winning at cards and jockeying around the sky. Palm trees and night-blooming wallflowers. Lots of good port smells — spices, coffee, tar, salt — you know. Gentlefolk, merchants, and peons — the same straights as in most other places. Sailors and assorted travelers passing in and out. Guys like me living around the edges of things. I spent a little over two years in Texorami, happy. Really. Not much contact with the others. Sort of postcard like hellos via the Trumps every now and then, and that was about it. Amber was pretty much off my mind. All this changed one night when I was sitting there with a full house and the guy across from me was trying to make up his mind whether or not I was bluffing.

The Jack of Diamonds began talking to me.

Yes, that is how it started. I was in a weird frame of mind anyway. I had just finished a couple very hot sets and was still kind of high. Also, I was physically strung out from a long day’s gliding and not much sleep the night before. I decided later that it must be our mental quirk associated with the Trumps that made me see it that way when someone was trying to reach me and I had cards in my hand — any cards. Ordinarily, of course, we get the message empty-handed, unless we are doing the calling. It could have been that my subconscious — which was kind of footloose at the time — just seized on the available props out of habit. Later, though, I had cause to wonder. Really, I just don’t know.