Four of Hearts

Every Thursday at three, Radomir did six card tricks in the day room at Ashfield House, and every Thursday everybody already knew all six. That was half the pleasure. A woman in the chair by the radiator called out the names before he began: the two kings, the imaginary card, the one where the card comes back wet. A man by the window, a carpenter for forty years, watched Radomir’s left hand the whole time, because the left hand was where the trick lived.

“You’ve moved it,” the man said, most weeks.

“I’ve moved it,” Radomir agreed, most weeks.

They were not good tricks. They were standard, the sort printed in a boy’s magic book in 1962, which is where Radomir got them. His skill was thirty years of doing them in the same order with the same jokes. The card came back wet because there was a wet cloth up his sleeve. Nobody was upset by knowing; knowing was the game, and the result was the same every week.

Then, one Thursday in November, the man by the window asked if he could shuffle.

Radomir handed the deck over. He was not sure why. The man shuffled slowly, took a card, looked at it for a long moment, pushed it back into the middle and slid the deck across the table with one finger.

There was nothing up Radomir’s sleeve. He had not touched the deck since he gave it away, he had not seen the card, and he had no idea where it was. From where the woman by the radiator sat she had a clear view of both his hands, and both his hands were on the table. He turned the top card over because there was nothing else to do.

Four of hearts.

The man went pale and then laughed, and said Radomir was getting better in his old age, and the woman said she’d known it all along, and the tea came round.

On the bus home Radomir sat with his hand flat over his coat pocket. There would be a reason. There is always a reason: a bent corner, two cards stuck together, some small thing he had done himself without noticing. Counting the deck would take four minutes and then he would know.

He got off at his stop with the cards still in his pocket, and he never counted them.