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A Game of Cards

By: Lisa Goldstein

* * * *

It all looks so civilized. A dinner party in the film community, attended by civilized, cultivated people, served by a dark-haired woman who might well be a refugee from the Third World. Family problems, problems with work, relaxation with a game of cards.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Only the eyes, flicking from face to face, counting up the betrayals. And the refugee, hoping to survive for another day.

“A Game of Cards” frankly reminds me of the game “Get the Guests” in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The question is, however, who gets them?

* * * *

The doorbell rang at seven. Rozal looked through the peephole and saw two guests framed as in a picture, a woman with short brown hair and a tall gangly man carrying a bottle of wine. Helen and Keith— they’d been at the house before. Rozal opened the door.

“Beautiful house,” Helen said, coming in and slipping off her coat. Rozal nodded, not sure how to take this. Of course they knew the house belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Hobart.

She hung the coats in the closet; they had a faint perfume scent, and the smell that water brings out in wool. Was it raining, then? In the bustle that surrounded the preparations for dinner, Rozal had not been able to go outside all day.

Helen paused at the framed mirror in the entryway and patted her hair. Keith scowled and grinned at his reflection, as if resigned to what he saw. The bottle of wine hung from his hand as though attached to it; he seemed to have forgotten it was there. Rozal watched as they made their way through the thick off-white carpet in the living room, leaving footprints as they went. The carpet had been vacuumed just minutes before the party, and would have to be vacuumed again tomorrow.

She couldn’t resist a quick glance in the mirror herself. Most Americans took her for older than her twenty-four years, but then most Americans looked far younger than their actual age. Her hair and eyes were brown and her complexion dark; they had called her skin “olive” at the immigration office, and she had looked the word up as soon as she got home, but she’d been none the wiser. She smiled at the reflection; she had not looked so healthy, so plump, in many years.

The doorbell rang, and she hurried to answer it. A young blond woman stood on the doorstep, Carol, another frequent visitor to the house. As soon as Rozal hung up her coat, she heard the bell again. This time when she opened the door, she saw a good-looking dark young man, balancing on the balls of his feet in impatience. He had an amused, quizzical expression, as if he had put on a face to greet Mrs. Hobart.

Rozal had never seen him in the house before, but she recognized him immediately from the movies she watched on her days off. He looked shorter than she would have expected. He said something to her in Spanish, but she smiled and shook her head: no, she was not Spanish.

Mrs. Hobart had seated Keith and Helen and Carol on the sectional couch, and now rose to greet the new arrival. “Steve!” she said. “So glad you could make it.”

“Drinks!” Mr. Hobart said, coming into the living room and clapping his hands. Carol called for something Rozal didn’t catch. Keith stood to hand over his bottle of wine, and Mr. Hobart pretended to be angry at him; somehow it had been both right and wrong for Keith to bring the wine.

At a signal from Mrs. Hobart, Rozal hurried through the dining room to the kitchen for the appetizers. The kitchen was at least ten degrees hotter than the living room: both ovens were on, and the cook had set a teakettle on the stove for tea. Rozal nodded to the cook, who sat on a high stool near the stove and fanned herself with a magazine, but the other woman seemed not to notice her. There was some question of status between her and the cook that Rozal did not quite understand.

Rozal took the tray of appetizers out of the refrigerator and went back to the living room. The party had already divided itself into groups: Mrs. Hobart was deep in conversation with Steve, waving her cigarette smoke away from his face, and Keith and Helen sat a little uncomfortably on the couch next to Carol. “And what do you do?” Keith asked. His face was too long, and his jaw and forehead protruded a little.

“Keith!” Helen said, and leaned to whisper something in his ear. Rozal offered them an appetizer, trying not to look amused. She had seen Carol come up to the house and talk to Mr. Hobart; money and small plastic bags were exchanged. “I thought she had something to do with video,” Keith said, unrepentant. Carol laughed, and after a while Helen joined in.

Rozal returned to the kitchen for more appetizers. As she passed the wet bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room, she heard a voice raised in anger, and she glanced around quickly. In the three months she had been with the Hobarts, she had learned that though they rarely became angry, it was best to pay attention when they did. But the shouting she heard was not directed at her. Mr. Hobart sat at the bar, speaking to someone on the phone.

“I just want to know where he is,” Mr. Hobart said. “No, he isn’t here—that’s why I called you. Well, how the hell should I know where he is?”

Rozal hurried back to the living room and began to pass around the appetizers. “Thank you, Rozal,” Mrs. Hobart said. The shouting from the bar grew louder; surely everyone in the living room could hear it by now. Mrs. Hobart raised her voice to cover it.

“No, she isn’t Hispanic,” she said. She laughed a little, but Rozal could see that she was getting worried. She glanced at her watch. “Why don’t you ask her yourself? Rozal, Steve wants to know where you’re from. Do you understand?”

“From Amaz,” Rozal said.

“Amaz?” Steve asked. “Where’s that?”

“Oh, you must have seen it on the news,” Mrs. Hobart said. “There was a coup and then a countercoup—no one’s really sure who’s running the country now. It was horrible. But Rozal managed to get out—she was one of the lucky ones.”

“Yes,” Rozal said. She had found a pack of cards somewhere on the long terrible road to the United States, and they had told her what Mrs. Hobart was saying now, that she would be fortunate, she would reach her destination. “Great abundance,” the cards had said, and she had certainly come to the land of abundance, a place where even the candy bars were encased in silver.

The doorbell rang, and she set down the tray of appetizers and went to answer it. Peter Hobart, Mr. and Mrs. Hobart’s son, stood in the doorway. By the streetlight behind him Rozal could see the rain she had sensed all day, coming down now in a black sheet like a slab of stone. She looked for Peter’s wife, but did not see her anywhere.

“John!” Mrs. Hobart called. “John, he’s here.”

Peter took off his leather jacket, revealing a ponytail that fell nearly to his waist, and handed the jacket to Rozal. It shone like silk from the rain. Mr. Hobart came into the entryway as she was putting it away. “Finally,” he said. “Don’t you think you’re taking the concept of fashionably late a little too far?”

“He wants to shout at me but he doesn’t dare,” Peter said to Rozal. “Not with all these people here.”

Rozal smiled at him, not too wide a smile because her first loyalty, after all, was to her employers. Still, she couldn’t help but like Peter; over the months she had discovered that most people did.

“We can start eating now,” Mr. Hobart said, going into the living room. “My son has decided to grace us with his presence.”

“Kill the fatted calf,” Peter said. He did not follow his father but remained behind to whisper to Rozal. “I’ve got something for you, Rosie my love. You’ll like it.”

Rozal closed the door to the closet, pleased. She remembered the loud dissatisfied tourists she had seen in Amaz, traveling in groups like fat geese, and she thought how lucky she was to be here, in this house, working for people as kind as the Hobarts. She had never heard that employers gave gifts to their servants. What could Peter possibly have for her? The pocket of his jacket had felt heavy.

The guests moved in an undisciplined group toward the dining room. “I’m sure everyone needs their drinks refreshed,” Mr. Hobart asked, going behind the bar. “I would have asked before, but I was busy trying to find my son.”

“Were you?” Peter asked. He sat at one of the two remaining places at the table; the other was probably for his wife. “There was no reason to bother Debbie— you know I always turn up sooner or later.”

Rozal went to the kitchen and began ladling the soup. “Does Mr. Hobart hate his son?” she asked the cook.

The other woman looked at her so oddly that for a moment Rozal thought she had gotten a word wrong, and she went over what she had said in her mind. Then the cook said, “It’s none of our business what they get up to. My job is to cook the food, and yours is to serve it, and that’s all we have to know.” Chastised, Rozal took the first bowls of soup out to the dining room.

“Looks wonderful,” Keith said. “Is this Amaz cuisine? Amazian cuisine?”

There was silence for a moment; Keith had made another social error by not knowing that the Hobarts had a cook in addition to a maid. Rozal began to like him. “I’m sure Amaz cuisine would be wonderful,” Mrs. Hobart said graciously. “We’re stuck with plain old American tonight, I’m afraid. Does anyone object to lamb?”

Rozal went back to the kitchen for more soup. She had never heard of Amaz cuisine; since the drought and the disruptions on the farms, most people had had enough to do just finding food to eat. A friend of hers, a man who had come to America with her, had opened a restaurant in the refugee neighborhood near downtown. He’d told her that no one here really knew what people ate in Amaz; he could serve anything he liked.

The talk at the table grew boisterous. Rozal knew that Mr. and Mrs. Hobart were in something called the “entertainment industry,” and the idea of a business formed solely to entertain greatly appealed to her. But she could barely understand anything the guests said, with their talk of points and box office and percentages.

Steve began to talk about a movie he’d seen lately. Carol, seated next to him, was watching him intently. Keith tried to say something but Steve interrupted him, his voice growing angrier and louder. “You’ve got to look at the numbers!” Mr. Hobart said, pitching his voice to drown out everyone else’s. “Look at the numbers!” Rozal wondered what numbers Mr. Hobart meant. She didn’t think she could ask anyone; certainly the cook wouldn’t know.

At last the meal ended, and Rozal went to the kitchen to prepare the tray of coffee cups. Loud laughter came from the pantry; Rozal looked through the doorway and saw Carol and Mrs. Hobart standing there. “He’s gorgeous!” Carol said. “Wrap him up— I’ll take him home! Did you invite him for me?”

“Of course I did.” Mrs. Hobart waved the smoke from her cigarette away from her face. “You were complaining for so long about never meeting any good men that I thought it was our duty to find you one. Go in there and be charming.”

“What’s wrong with him? Is he married?”

“Never been married, as far as I know.”

“What does that mean? Is he afraid of commitment? Oh, no—I bet he’s gay!”

Mrs. Hobart laughed. “I don’t think so. He was dating someone for six months—they just broke up.”

“It’s drugs, then.”

“You’d know that better than I would.”

“I don’t sell the hard stuff, you know that.”

“Listen—why don’t you ask him yourself if you’re so curious?”

“Oh, sure. Excuse me, but do you have any antisocial habits I should know about? And by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any horrible diseases, would you?”

Mrs. Hobart shepherded Carol into the dining room, and Rozal followed them. “You don’t know how lucky you are, being married,” Carol said, turning back to her hostess.

The guests in the dining room seemed to have talked themselves out; Carol and Mrs. Hobart took their places in silence. Rozal could hear the rain beating on the roof. Peter leaned back in his chair. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I brought something you might be interested in.”

Rozal set down a coffee cup and looked up at him, wishing she had some pretext to stay in the dining room. Or could this be the present he said he’d gotten her? As if in answer to her question he said, “Stay here, Rosie—you’ll like this.”

He stood and went to the living room. Mrs. Hobart exchanged glances with a few of the guests, her eyebrows raised above her china coffee cup. Mr. Hobart whispered something to her, and she said, “Well, I certainly have no idea. He never tells me anything, you know that.”

Peter returned with a flat box the size of a book. “Oh…” Rozal said involuntarily.

He winked at her. “I thought you’d like this, Rosie my love,” he said. “You’ve seen these before, then?”

She reached her hand out to touch the box, but Peter had already turned to show it to Steve. “I found these in that new neighborhood downtown, where all the refugees live,” Peter said. “They said it’s the first time they’ve gotten a shipment of cards from Amaz.”

“What are they?” Carol asked. “Are they like tarot cards?”

“Apparently you’re supposed to play a game with them,” Peter said. “That’s what the man who sold them to me said, anyway. Isn’t that right, Rosie?”

Rozal shook her head, wishing she had the words to explain. “They say—they tell us what happen in my country. In Amaz.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Hobart asked.

“Like on television. We have no television, so we read the cards.”

“You mean like the news?” Carol asked.

“Beka,” Rozal said, so grateful for the word she reverted to her own language. “Yes. They tell us the news.”

“Actually you’re supposed to play a game with them,” Peter said, frowning a little. “See? It looks like Bingo.” He opened the box and took out little boards, which he passed around to everyone at the table.

Carol laughed, delighted. Keith turned his board over and studied the elaborate pattern on the back. “Come on, Helen,” he said to his wife, who had not touched her board. “Let’s play awhile.” Helen looked around the table, seeming anxious that her husband not make another blunder, but when she saw the others collect their boards, she relaxed.

Rozal looked on, feeling wretched. This was not the way you treated the cards at all. You had to read them for the latest news first; it was only when they became outdated, when all the timeliness had gone out of them and another pack was issued, that you played games with them. Or you told fortunes; she had been the best in her village for coaxing meaning out of the cards.

She ached for news of Amaz, something to counter the rumors she and every other immigrant heard every day. Who had come to power while she had been struggling to find her way in America...