Queen of Spades Read online

  Was he dreaming? No—distantly, he heard his own voice, rising above the whispers. Coming toward him, from behind the door. It was a child’s voice—his voice—ascending over the bell of the phone, overmastering it. The voice was singing.

  They fly so high,

  Nearly reach the sky,

  Then in my dreams,

  They fade and die.

  When he finished the song, the crowd before him, his teachers, schoolmates, and friends at Saint Agatha’s Home for Children, burst into applause, and Mannheim smiled and received it all, standing before them. The year was 1935, and it was springtime. The future, so brilliant and so brittle, moved through him, quickening his breath, something impossible to grasp, to seize firmly, a last, powerful wave of sensation the gray shell could no longer contain.

  Mannheim shuddered once, twice. Then hands were laid upon him, and Mannheim was no more.

  Several weeks later, Dr. Eccleston and Theo were sitting in the shop, still talking about their great fortune.

  “It’s astonishing,” Dr. Eccleston said. “You are rich, child—rich!”

  “I wonder if Mr. Mannheim knew all along.” Theo looked older now, dressed in new clothes. “He changed everything for us.”

  The night of his passing, Dr. Eccleston had called Mannheim to tell him the good news. There had been three lottery tickets in his junk drawer, over a year old, and she’d taken them to their place of purchase, a twenty-four-hour gas station, to ascertain their value. The first two were losers, but upon the third, the clerk’s eyes had widened and he gasped, “I can’t believe it!” He’d come around the counter to shake her hand, yelling to someone in the back. “She’s here! She’s finally here! We’ve been waiting,” he told her with a smile, “for a very long time!”

  The jackpot was an almost ludicrous $1.7 million.

  Then, two days after Christmas, after the services were over, a lawyer had come into the shop and informed them that upon his death, Mr. Stephen Mannheim, with no next of kin, had left a will that distributed his personal effects between Dr. Eccleston and Theo Sommerville. Mannheim’s house belonged to the bank, the lawyer said, but the rest of his possessions would be sold in an auction, with proceeds after service fees to go directly toward Theo’s college education. The will further stipulated that any additional monies would be placed in trust under Dr. Eccleston’s guidance until the child turned eighteen.

  With the ticket safely redeemed and the processing of its jackpot underway, Dr. Eccleston felt she was finally entitled to relax, although the phone kept ringing from local and even national news media. One of the most curious, a woman named Faye, had even come to the shop under the pretense of being an interested new client, although Theo had immediately seen through her. “You don’t have to pretend with us, ma’am,” he had told her. “We’ll tell you everything you need to know about Mr. Mannheim.”

  This particular afternoon in the first week of the New Year, Dr. Eccleston and Theo received another unexpected visitor. He was a young, dark-haired man Theo had never seen before, dressed in a gray chauffeur’s uniform—his name was Thomas, and Dr. Eccleston was his mother. This was a fact that delighted young Theo, who’d only rarely heard mention of his cousin’s existence before, and always in the past tense. But here he was, standing before them in the flesh: Thomas told them he had come to say good-bye, as he and his employer were leaving Snoqualmie for good.

  “Where will you go, mister?” Theo asked.

  “Cousin, Theo,” Dr. Eccleston gently reminded. “Thomas is your cousin.”

  “Göttingen,” Thomas said, smiling. “It’s an old city in Germany. My employer is a scientist, and there’s a new line of inquiry open to us there.”

  Dr. Eccleston, for her part, said she was so glad Thomas had come to see her before he left—so glad and so happy.

  From what Theo could gather as he silently listened, observing their body language and sensing the tenor of their unarticulated thoughts, mother and son had been estranged for over a decade, the result of an argument over Thomas’s future. She, of course, had wanted her talented son to pursue the divinatory arts, as he (like Theo himself) had shown much promise at a young age. Despite his gifts, however, Thomas’s mind leaned more toward the logical and mathematical—he craved explanations, proofs that could be documented, disseminated, archived. At college, he had fallen under the spell of one of his professors, a woman much older than he was, and when she left the university to continue her own personal investigations into the relationship between long-term probability and deep gravity, he had followed her as an assistant.

  At the time, Dr. Eccleston could not help but suspect something untoward in the old professor’s seduction of her only son: his dropping out of school had been the final straw in their turbulent relationship. After a series of raging rows over his plans, in which the mother decried her son’s path as false, and he in return discredited his mother’s intuitions as so much bunk, they had mutually decided to withdraw relations until this deeply personal, deeply ideological resentment erected between them—this impenetrable blank wall—had, through the passage of years, finally crumbled.

  The mood was festive in Dr. Eccleston’s small shop, where Thomas stayed for over two hours, talking excitedly with both of them about the future. Dr. Eccleston could not stop beaming and rubbing her son’s hands and shoulders with affection as they sat around the table. Both their auras, Theo noticed, were the same shade of deep blue, and beautiful. He closed his eyes and listened to their chatter, hearing more than their words, paying attention to their intonations, their inflections, their long separation in the spaces and pauses in between. By the time Thomas left, it was dark outside, and as Dr. Eccleston and Theo watched the headlights of Thomas’s long, fancy car recede from the shop window, he was surprised to see it had snowed, a fine blanket of flakes covering the ground.

  Neither the Countess nor her driver ever appeared in Snoqualmie again, a fact that surprised many at the Royal, but not Chan. As the months passed, the incident of the changed card faded into legend around him, becoming a dusty relic like the Countess’s old chair, which joined the suits of armor in the entrance vestibule, and the Faro table, which was eventually folded and stored in a closet in the changing room.

  Chan knew there had been only one previously documented case of exchanged cards—in late-eighteenth-century France, also, perhaps not so coincidentally, in a hand of Faro, immortalized by Pushkin in his famous short story. This hand would, in time, join this predecessor in the annals of gambling as a true historical oddity.

  But in Chan’s memories, the hand never lost its luster—on damp Snoqualmie nights, the experience of its magic warmed him, and reminded him of the unknowability of the world, and its sweetness.

  Today, you may still find him dealing in the High-Limit Salon at the Royal, his tables full and lively, and many of the players leaving substantial winners.

  About the Author

  Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Michael Shou-Yung Shum eventually found himself dealing poker in a dead-end casino in Lake Stevens, Washington. Two doctorates bookend this strange turn of events: the first in Psychology from Northwestern, and the second in English from the University of Tennessee. Along the way, Michael spent a dozen years in Chicago, touring the country as a rave DJ, and three years in Corvallis, Oregon, where he received his MFA in Fiction Writing. He currently resides in Astoria, New York, with Jaclyn Watterson and three cats. Queen of Spades is his first novel.

  Acknowledgments

  Eternal gratitude to Laura Stanfill for believing in Queen of Spades, and for being the best advocate a writer can have. To the talented team at Forest Avenue, including Gigi Little who designed the gorgeous cover, thank you for bringing the manuscript to its beautiful, flawless fruition.

  To my talented cousins, Ciaran and Byron Parr, much love and thanks for the two exquisite interior illustrations and the author photo, respectively.

  To all the writers and booksellers kind enough to
read the early galleys and provide blurbs, thank you.

  For everyone who helped shape Queen of Spades from draft to manuscript, especially my first readers and committee members at the University of Tennessee, I will forever remain indebted.

  To my friends at Oregon State University, thank you for supporting me and my writing when I was finding my way.

  Finally, unending love to my spirit companion, Jaclyn Watterson, and our guides, Woodsy, Basil, and Zoe—it wouldn’t be a world without you.

  An early draft of the first chapters appeared in Spolia in 2014.

  Readers’ Guide

  A Note on Faro

  Faro, the game around which Queen of Spades is centered, was once the most popular gambling game in the world. Most famously, Doc Holliday banked a (reputedly crooked) Faro game in Tombstone, South Dakota, in the 1870s—but as the twentieth century loomed, Faro had already begun to disappear from casinos and gaming parlors, eclipsed in popularity by Blackjack and Craps. Please note that for the sake of readability, I’ve simplified the rules of Faro slightly, although the climactic final hand conforms to the original rules, as well as the rules of the Faro-like game used by Pushkin in “The Queen of Spades.”

  Casino Terminology

  Bust—a hand in Blackjack that exceeds 21.

  Checks—casino chips. Common casino denominations are White ($1), Red ($5), Green ($25), Black ($100), and Purple ($500).

  Cut—the final act of an official shuffle, involving separating the deck into two parts at an arbitrary point (either selected by the dealer, as in Poker, or the player, as in Blackjack) and placing the bottom portion on top.

  Cut Card—each dealer’s unique plastic card (typically of a uniform color such as yellow or blue) cut the same size as a deck, upon which the one-handed cut at the end of an official shuffle is performed.

  Daily Double—a single bet involving the winners of two different horse races.

  Dime—$1,000. Also “Grand” and “Large.”

  Down—a dealer shift at a table, usually half an hour.

  E.O.—an Early Out or Early Off, leaving a shift early.

  Exacta—a bet on the first- and second-place finishers in a horse race.

  Felt—to bust another player in Poker.

  Floor—the on-duty manager and settler of all disputes.

  Muck—to fold in Poker. Also, the discards in a hand.

  Paint—Jacks, Queens, and Kings.

  Pitch—to professionally deal a card to a player.

  Push—to tie in a casino, in games such as Blackjack or Poker.

  Redbird—a red $5 chip.

  Reload—to buy more chips.

  Riffle—the traditional shuffle where the deck is separated into halves and interwoven with the thumb.

  Set-Up—a new deck of cards, usually upon request by a player, or due to the current deck being compromised in some way.

  Scramble—the first shuffle of a new deck, giving it a “good scramble” face down, using circular motions of both hands in order to thoroughly mix the cards.

  Shuffle—an official casino shuffle is two riffle shuffles followed by a strip cut, another riffle shuffle, finishing with a one-handed cut onto a cut card.

  Strip Cut—the most challenging shuffle, where the deck is held in one hand and cards are successively “stripped” by the other hand from the top of the deck to the bottom.

  Tap out—tapping a dealer on their right shoulder to indicate replacement after the current hand is finished. Not to be confused with “tapped out,” a gambling term meaning broke.

  Book Club Questions

  1. How did reading Queen of Spades change your ideas about casinos and the world of gambling?

  2. What choices did the author make approaching the issue of gambling as an addictive behavior?

  3. Close your eyes, and for several minutes, imagine the Queen of Spades in as much detail as you can. Why is this one card so significant?

  4. Barbara is a strong woman whose relationships do not define her, yet two men—Dimsberg and Chimsky—are over-eager for her attention. How does she manage to keep each at bay?

  5. Do you believe in luck or chance? What role does risk play in your life?

  6. At what point in the novel does Chan decide to stay at the Royal Casino instead of moving on, and why?

  7. Consider the paths taken by the four main characters who are present for the final deal. How has each changed by story’s end?

  8. How does the time and setting influence the feel and mood of the story? Would the story have to change if it were set today?

  9. Read Pushkin’s short story “The Queen of Spades,” upon which this novel is based. Discuss the many similarities and differences.