Chapter 2

We went to Anya and Jenna's room, since they had the coziest furniture. After we sat down (Jenna claimed the lounge chair, Anya the futon, while Natalie and I opted for the bean bags), Jenna asked, "Before cutting for partners, what should we play for?"

"Why not five dollars per imp, as usual?" replied Natalie.

Uh-oh. Imp stood for international match point, a form of bridge scoring mostly used only by professional bridge players. Something tells me I'm seriously outclassed here.

"Let's try something else. How about... the losers have to pay for tomorrow's night out?"

Anya looked thoughtful. "That might not be a bad idea. Our games have been getting a little tense lately."

Seeing me nod and Natalie shrug, Jenna shuffled the deck before we cut for partners, hi-low versus the middle two. I drew a seven, Jenna a three, and Anya a nine. She looked delighted until Natalie flipped over an eight. A brief frown crossed her face, then she shrugged and went over to talk with Jenna about their bidding strategy.

Natalie moved her bean bag over to me, a wry grin on her face. "Anya's probably not very happy with me right now," she whispered. I raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything. We went on to discuss game play for a few minutes, then rejoined Anya and Jenna.

I was right--the girls were all good players. The first few hands saw Jenna and Anya pull ahead, though Natalie and I were never very far behind. Still, it took a very difficult slam and inspired play by Natalie to put us over the top on the final deal. A spirited post-mortem ensued, with the four of us concluding that Anya and Jenna had defended correctly, but Natalie had found the only way the slam could succeed without a misstep.

"And you said you weren't good," remarked Jenna, looking over at me.

"Hey, the cards worked out, and Natalie was brilliant. I just sat back and let her do all the work," I replied as I got to my feet. "Thank you all for the wonderful evening; I'd love to do this again sometime. Good night, y'all."

"We'll be leaving around eight tomorrow night," added Anya. "If you don't show up, I'll come looking for you," she said mock-threateningly. Everyone else waved goodbye as I went out the door.

After a quick shower, I realized that I didn't really want to go to bed yet. Walking over to the floor lounge, I noticed that no on was inside, and decided to stop in. The fire was just dying out, so I added a small log to the fire and watched the resurgent flames dance for a while.

"Still up?"

Startled from my reverie, I turned to see Natalie standing in the doorway, her hands hanging loosely at her sides. I had turned off the overhead lights earlier, so the flickering fire lent a ruddy glow to her face.

"Couldn't sleep. How about you?"

"I was looking for you, actually."

Now, this was interesting. "It couldn't wait until tomorrow, er, later today?"

"Not really."

"In that case, have a seat and tell me what's on your mind."

She sat down on a nearby couch, but hesitated before blurting out, "Why Anya?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why Anya? For the last two weeks, you've politely rebuffed any kind of social interaction with everyone here. Then, she shows up with the charming and gregarious version of you on her arm. The change is refreshing... but a little disturbing as well."