“You still don’t agree with me.” My conversant and I were playing cards in a private little corner of the dream world. Ke laid down a three of spades.
I threw a four of clubs on top of it. “I kinda do. I kinda don’t. I question why I wanted to know what tarot card identifies me in the first place. Useless information seems vainly useless.” I drew a card from the stack and frowned to hide the usefulness of it.
“Not useless.” Ke set a five of diamonds on the table and drew a card without looking at it. “You know a little more about yourself that you were ignorant about before. You’ve accepted a quirk that before you tried to purge in error.”
“I haven’t seen that card come up since in my personal throws.” The joker I had just pulled was put into play. I laid it down, announcing it was a seven. “Which was part of why I wanted to know.”
“You should have kept that joker. Was better to take a hit of drawing two cards, than to waste it now. No take backs, though.” An eight of hearts smothered the joker. Another card slipped into kir hand. “You were thinking you would have something like what [he] has. You won’t. What did [that other crotchety bastard] tell you. You won’t be found in any book. There is no system that describes you. You can not go by what other people experience or have. You won’t have what [he] has. Because you are not him.”
“Right. So. I have the information I wanted to know, and yes, it has proven valuable elsewhere, but for the context I was seeking, it means jacque shitte.” I was searching in my hand for a nine. The game we were playing took a card at random and removed it from the deck, face down. If I could not play a card, I would have to pull cards from the stack until I had a card to play. The goal of the game was to make four runs from Ace to King, or attempt to make as many runs as possible before the removed card forced a stop. The number of cards in your hand gave the number of points assigned to you. Whoever had the fewest points by the time someone reached 100 points won the game. The bastard I was playing against had me 4 points to 20. “And I’m wondering what the loss of the Convos has to do with this.” Drawing cards, and no nine.
“You found the missing cards. The Convos is intact again. But to you, it is still lost.” Ke watched with amusement as I continued to draw cards from the stack.
“Oh, fucking hell, we’ve only made two runs, we can’t be out of nines already!” Drawing more cards. “And yes, all the cards of the Convos were recovered, intact and without marks. And yes, I will never be able to use the Convos again and am considering giving it away because that deck is dead and inert to me now. But I don’t see what that has to do with [that tarot card] and my cognitive dissonance over the importance and relevance of that information.
“Here. I’ll give you a clue.” Ke laid kir five cards down. Two of them were the missing nines. One was the second joker. I would never be able to complete this hand. “All decks are stacked.” Ke turned over the removed card. It was [a certain tarot card].
I flipped the table in frustration but our laughter was mutual and bright.
“You fucking bitch.”
“Yes.”