A Frayed Wire and a Prayer

Burt Rosenberg parked the Land Rover outside the plaster mill at six forty on a Friday evening and sat in the driver's seat for a full minute, hoping the engine would catch fire and give him an excuse to leave.

It did not catch fire. It ticked, cooling, smug about it.

"Casino night," he muttered. "In a mill. Full of dust and men with hoses."

The thing was, his ex had won last year's fundraiser. Not the door prize. Not a raffle. She'd cleaned out the craps table, four hundred and fifty maloti, and posed for a photo holding the chips like a trophy wife holding a tennis cup. Three years since they'd split and she was still beating him at things. At forty-four, Burt had learned that grudges keep better than leftovers.

He got out. He locked the truck. He went in.

* * *

The mill smelled like, well, plaster. Chalk and damp and something industrial underneath, the ghost of whatever they mixed in the vats when this place was actually a mill. Roberta Wilson had lent the whole main floor to the volunteer fire department for the night, which meant the card tables sat between towers of sacked plaster stacked to the ceiling, like gambling in a warehouse owned by a very boring drug lord.

There was a roulette wheel. There was a makeshift bar staffed by a teenager's dad. There was a banner over the bar that said Support Your Fire Department, half the letters sagging.

Burt bought in for four hundred at the blackjack table because blackjack was at least a game where the house had to earn it.

He lost hand after hand.

The fourth hand, he stopped watching his own cards, because the woman two seats down was on a run.

She was thirty-something, maybe thirty-nine, with reading glasses pushed up into dark curly hair and a stack of chips organized with a precision that unsettled him. Small ones on the left. Big ones on the right. She tapped the table for a card like she was pressing a key on a keyboard she'd designed herself.

"Dealer busts," said the dealer, and pushed chips her way. Third hand in a row.

"Statistically," she said, mostly to herself, stacking the new chips in perfect columns, "this should stop happening!"

Burt lost his fifth hand too.

"You count cards?" he asked her.

"No. I measure the shadows of stars!" She glanced over. "It's called occultation. I time how long a star disappears behind an asteroid. Chord timings. It tells you the asteroid's shape."

"So you're a professional gambler."

"Occultation chord ruler, actually. It's on my business card and nobody has ever once believed me."

Burt lost his sixth hand. "Burt Rosenberg. Park ranger at the reserve."

"Cari Buchanan." She put out a hand. Her grip was firm, dry, the handshake of somebody who calibrated things. "You're the one who tracks the leopards? Duane talks about you. He says you once followed a leopard for six hours and it turned out to be a rock."

"It was a very committed rock," Burt said. "Rock with spots."

She laughed. Short, sharp, real. Then she won her fourth hand.

"Unbelievable," Burt said.

"It's a hundred and one million to one against four straight wins, roughly. If you're bored I can show you the math."

"I'd rather watch you keep winning. It's the closest thing to hope this table has."

That got another laugh. Burt put five maloti on the felt, got a nineteen, and lost to a twenty anyway. The dealer apologized with his eyebrows.

* * *

Around eight, Duane Bower climbed onto a milk crate near the bar and clinked a spoon against a glass until the room shut up. Twenty-eight years old, fire department volunteer, organizer of this whole circus, wearing a suit jacket over a fire brigade t-shirt because somebody had told him that was formal.

"Thank you all for coming," Duane said. "Quick housekeeping. Bathrooms are out back. Bar closes at eleven. And if the fire alarm goes off, please do not panic, that is Roberta's actual mill alarm, it goes off when the wind changes direction. It has gone off twice tonight already."

"It has not," Roberta Wilson called from the bar. Forty-seven, plaster mill owner, a woman built like the mill's own silo and about as negotiable.

"It went off once," Duane admitted. "Anyway. We have a special item tonight. A lucky charm, donated by a generous member of the community."

He held up a length of wire. Frayed, blackened at one end, coiled like a dead snake.

"This," Duane said, "is the starter solenoid wire from Engine Two. The one that failed during the Mbeki Street call in March."

Murmurs. Somebody whistled. Burt remembered that call. The engine wouldn't start, and they'd pushed it downhill to get it going, and a fridge had burned.

"Now," Duane went on, "the night after we replaced this wire, Engine Two started on the first try. Ever since, this wire has been lucky. It once found a parking spot outside the bank."

"That's not luck, that's parking," someone shouted.

"Lucky parking," Duane said. "We're auctioning it. Bidding starts at ten maloti. All proceeds go to the new turnout gear fund."

Bidding went where bidding goes at a fire hall auction, which is nowhere. Twelve maloti stood for a solid ninety seconds while forty people looked at their drinks.

Then Cari Buchanan stood up.

"Twenty," she said.

Roberta whistled from the bar. Duane's whole face lit up like a siren.

"Twenty! Do I hear twenty-five?"

"Thirty," said a guy from the second engine.

"Forty," Cari said, without hesitation.

Burt leaned over. "It's a frayed wire."

"It's a statistically anomalous wire," Cari said. "And I have a bet with myself."

"A bet with yourself?"

"I made a deal on the drive over. If I did something spontaneous tonight, one spontaneous thing, I'd stop being annoyed at the universe. This counts." She raised a finger. "Fifty."

The second engine guy folded with a groan. Duane banged the spoon on the crate. "Fifty maloti, sold. To the lady who rules chords."

Applause, thin but honest. Cari took the wire from Duane, examined the frayed end like a jeweler examining a diamond, and coiled it into her jacket pocket.

"You actually paid fifty," Burt said.

"Forty of it is deductible, Duane says."

"I absolutely did not say that," Duane said, walking past with the milk crate under his arm. "But write it down anyway, Roberta does the books."

Cari sat back down at the table and put the wire on the felt next to her chips, dead center, like a totem.

"So," she said to Burt. "What's your game? Tell me it's craps."

"Craps is a scam with dice."

"Craps is probability you can watch happen. That's why I like it. Blackjack the dealer's cards hide half the information. Craps, everything's out in the open. Honest chaos." She gathered her stacks, left hand, right hand, exact. "Come on. You've lost five hands. Your luck needs a new venue."

"That's not how luck works."

"Neither is a frayed wire, and I just paid fifty for one. Play with me or don't."

Burt looked at the blackjack table, which had taken four hundred of his maloti and offered nothing back but arithmetic. He looked at Cari Buchanan, who was already standing, wire in pocket, chips in hand, waiting with the patience of somebody used to waiting for asteroids.

"Fine," he said. "But if I lose everything, I'm telling the leopard rock about you."

"Tell it I said hello," Cari said, and walked toward the craps table like someone who had already decided how the evening was going to go.

She had, as it turned out. Just not in the way either of them expected.

The craps table sat near the far wall, under a string of paper lanterns somebody had stapled up crooked. Stacks of plaster sacks rose behind it, floor to ceiling, wrapped in plastic like giant white marshmallows.

Burt bought in for another two hundred. Cari bought in for fifty and put the wire on the rail.

"Okay," she said. "Explain craps to me like I'm smart but new."

"You're an astronomer. You don't know dice?"

"Astronomy is dice with a budget. Go on."

Burt walked her through it. Pass line, come-out roll, sevens, the whole gospel. She listened with her chin on her hand, glasses coming down out of her hair and onto her nose.

"So the seven is the villain."

"The seven is the villain."

"And everyone cheers when the villain fails."

"Basically."

"Good. I understand narratives." She put ten maloti on the pass line. "Roll."

Burt rolled. Seven. Cari took her winnings without a flicker of expression.

"Beginner's luck," Burt said.

"That's not a real phenomenon."

"It's a real phenomenon. Ask anyone who's ever had beginner's luck."

Burt took the dice next. He threw hard, off the back wall, no ceremony. Eleven. A couple of guys at the table hooted. He rolled again. Nine. Again. Nine again. He started grinning like an idiot, which he later admitted was accurate.

"Point is nine," Cari said. "Roll a nine, Burt. P(9) is 4 out of 36. That's favorable, as these things go."

"Never say those numbers at a table. It scares the dice."

"The dice don't have ears."

"The dice have ears and grudges." He rolled. Six. He rolled again. Three. Again. Six. The table groaned with him. "See? Grudges."

"You said don't mention numbers. You've mentioned six and three."

"That's different. Those were results."

Her counting was the thing that got people. She stood beside him and murmured the totals under her breath like a metronome. "Four. Eight. Twelve. Four again, that's the third four." Somebody at the table said, quietly, "I love her." A woman in a green windbreaker said, "She's counting them. That's a real system, my cousin does that."

"It's not a system," Cari said. "It's a record."

"Records win money," the woman said, and threw a chip on the pass line as tribute.

Burt rolled boxcars. The table erupted. He threw both arms up like he'd scored a goal, and knocked over Cari's wire.

"Careful," she said, picking it up. "That's a fifty-maloti wire."

"It's worth nothing."

"It's worth fifty maloti and one spontaneous act. Don't jostle the spontaneous act."

He rolled a seven then, and the table groaned