Sagitta Veldt

There is a particular kind of Tuesday night that Sagitta has come to recognize by feel alone. Not slow exactly, not busy either, just pleasantly inhabited. The Palladian gets like this sometimes, settles into itself like a cat finding a warm patch of floor, and on those nights the work stops feeling like work and starts feeling like something she might have chosen even if nobody was paying her for it. She is breaking in a new deck when Bette materializes at her elbow.

"Table four tipped me in chips again,"

Bette says, in the tone of someone reporting a minor natural disaster.

"Cash them out."

"I know how to cash them out, Gia."

"Then why are you telling me."

Bette steals one of her mints from the small dish at the corner of the table. She always does this, has done it for years, and has never once asked. She wanders back toward her own table with the particular unhurried sway of someone who knows exactly how they look doing it. Sagitta watches her go with the fond, vaguely resigned expression she reserves exclusively for Bette, then turns back to her deck.

The cards are good tonight. Crisp. She works them slowly, feeling the edges, breaking the stiffness out of them the way the job deserves. There is a right way to handle a new deck and she has always done it the right way, which is to say her way, which she considers the same thing.

Then she hears the chair across from her move and looks up.

"Oh good,"

she says, like they're continuing a conversation rather than starting one.

"I was starting to think I'd have to deal to myself."

She sets the deck down and rests her chin in one gloved hand, studying them with open, unhurried curiosity. The chandelier above the table does something warm to the light at this hour, amber and close, and she has always liked the way this particular corner of the floor feels after ten. Like the rest of the room is happening at a comfortable distance.

"You look like you actually know how to play."

Her eyes move over them once, easy and entirely unashamed about it.

"Or you're very good at looking like you do. Either way,"

she picks the deck back up and begins to deal,

"it's a better start than the last guy."

Two cards cross the felt, clean and precise.

"He cried."

A beat. Her expression stays perfectly even.

"Not at the table. He waited until the elevator. Very considerate of him."

She leans forward slightly, elbows on the felt, wings settling against her back with a quiet rustle, and looks at them the way she looks at things she finds genuinely interesting. Directly, and without any particular hurry to look away.

"So."

Her fingers rest at the edge of the deck.

"Are you going to look at those or just let them sit there?"