One (standard:romance, 1104 words)
Author: V.N. Leigh	Added: Jun 16 2004	Views/Reads: 3492/2237	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
It's only just a game, but it's the players and the conversation that make it interesting.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

thin white cotton, hunched forward over the table and cast a dark 
shadow on his game. He cursed the light from the lamp she had placed 
behind him. It always outdid the overhead light, and gave the annoying 
presence of a shadow that would not otherwise be there. 

He sat up, and the shadow moved off of his cards. She smiled on the
sofa, laughing at something secret. He looked at her. She smiled at the 
magazine. 

He returned to his deck. He regathered the cards. Flip, flip, flip. 

Nothing. 

"I ran into an old friend at work today. I invited him over." Her tone
was measured, careful, calculated. 

"When is he coming," he offed casually. 

"Not until Friday likely. He has things to do. He's very busy and
important man." 

He grunted. 

"He's the head of the entire division of that company I applied for last
week. I'm just glad he remembered me from when we were still working on 
the same level. We used to have the best chats. He really understood 
me. He understood where I was headed. It's just a shame he got there 
first." 

Flip, flip, flip. "He who?" 

"He, my friend, Chris, the marketing guy. Anyway, he's coming over, and
if things go well I'm sure he'll speak in high favour of me, then I can 
finally get out of this dump." 

Flip, flip, flip. 

"Speaking of which," she continued, "why is this place such a mess. You
didn't spend your whole idiotic day sitting around flipping cards did 
you? It's just stupid solitaire." 

Flip, flip, flip. "No, I didn't. I wasn't home much today. I went to the
hospital." 

"What did you go there for," she demanded with impatience. 

"My father is sick, remember?" 

"What's he sick with?" She rolled her eyes. "I swear, you're like a
child. I have to play question games with you." 

"Testicular cancer." 

"Oh, so he's going to die then." She flipped the page in her magazine.
"That's a shame." 

He nodded. Her lack of concern was audacious. Of course, she had let her
own mother die because she had been too busy to take the aging, sickly 
woman to the hospital. She had told her mother to call her later, 
assuring her it was only heartburn and that the woman was being a 
hypocondriac, but by the time the ambulence, the old woman's last phone 
call, got there, the heart had stopped. 

Flip, flip, flip. 

She rose from her perch, slid through the apartment, and disappeared in
the bedroom. She did not come back out again, and he would not speak to 
her again until the following night, when the same scene would play 
itself out again. She would move away from him, put up her casual 
words, layering them blindly, and intricately, with her careful care to 
be careless, and he would sit in his own shadow, turning over his 
cards, and hating the light she put behind him. 

Flip, flip, flip. 

There were no moves to be made and his deck was out again.


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