Pale Carnations -ch. 4 Update 4- -mutt Jeff- ... -

“Mutt,” I said, sliding the door shut. The latch clicked with a finality that made his shoulders twitch.

Jeff nodded, satisfied. “There it is. She’ll break again. They always do. The only question is whether she breaks for the crowd… or against it.”

“That’s Mister Jeff to you, boy,” he growled, not looking up. He was shuffling a deck of cards with hands that were all knuckle and gristle—the hands of a man who’d broken bones for sport and then nursed the same bones back wrong. “Or ‘Sir.’ Your old man always remembered ‘Sir.’” Pale Carnations -Ch. 4 Update 4- -Mutt Jeff- ...

“Go on,” he said. “Let’s see if you’ve got your father’s luck.”

I picked up the photograph and slid it back into my pocket. “The club wants her ready for the main event. No more ‘private exhibitions.’” “Mutt,” I said, sliding the door shut

The air in the back room of The Carnation tasted of old cedar, whiskey sweat, and the faint, coppery tang of last month’s takedown. I found Jeff there, not in the kennels where the new stock was kept, but hunched over a scarred card table, the brim of his flat cap casting a shadow over eyes that had seen too many losing hands.

Jeff finally stopped shuffling. He fanned the cards—a perfect spread of kings and sevens, all dead hands—and then scooped them into a single pile. “Pretty thing, ain’t she? Bit of a screamer, though. Not the fun kind. The legal kind.” “There it is

He held out the deck of cards to me. “Pick one.”