Day One
"Oops!"
With that ominous warning, like a peal of thunder before the apocalypse, disaster struck.
A Tsunami of white wine and ice cubes flooded the table, inundating our only set of playing cards.
My sister was never the most graceful, once she had a glass or two of white wine in her.
Stone cold sober, she was one of the most graceful people I knew.
She is almost as tall as me, blonde and slender. Her athletic body, trained and trimmed for years and years, she was always in full control of everything. So much, that when alcohol entered the picture, she was almost the opposite.
Not that either of us drank any alcohol at all, in ordinary times. But these times, being in lockdown away from college. Stuck in our parents house for more than two months now, and for the last month, we had no internet. Nothing to keep us sane, except daytime TV, which we loathed, each other, and our old stash of board games and a single worn deck of playing cards.
So yeah, we were getting a bit stir crazy, so we drank some wine to remain sane. The lack of regular training had also softened Kaitlyn ever so slightly. It bothered her, I knew. But from my perspective, it wasn't all bad. It added a little more femininity to her, not that she wasn't feminine before, but she was a little too fit. A little too little body fat made her seem almost masculine.
She was getting a free ride at college, due to her athletic prowess, which she didn't really need. Our parents were diplomats, so we had plenty of money. But it was a point of pride to her, that she was making her own way, and she had hopes of going to the olympics some day.
For now, I was just hoping we could salvage the cards.
We had churned through the old board games pretty fast, and had agreed that they were very well designed to suit ten year olds. But we found them too simple.
So, instead, armed with an old book full of hundreds of card games, and our single deck of cards, we had taken to playing cards every night, betting chores to make it interesting.
And drinking wine. Don't judge.
Kaitlyn rushed to fetch kitchen towels, while I tried to scoop up the cards before they were too soaked.
Roughly half an hour later, I looked at my watch, and declared: "time of death: twenty past eight, pm."
The cards were not salvageable.
They were old and worn, and had drunk in the wine even faster than we did. They were warped in dimensions I thought only existed in theoretical physics.
"There HAS to be another deck of cards somewhere in this house!" Kaitlyn said, and I bobbed my head in agreement.
"Yeah, with all the junk mom and dad picks up when abroad, there has to be something somewhere. maybe in one of their carry on bags... or maybe something in dad's office. He keeps the strangest things in there." I added.
"Alright, I'll check the bags and mom's dresser, you go rifle through dad's stuff." Kaitlyn decided.
I quickly agreed, definitely not wanting to go through mom's stuff, there was no way I was going to risk finding some of her more personal items, of the sort that might scar my fragile psyche for life.
Besides, dad's office, cluttered as it was, was stuffed with all kinds of fun stuff. We usually would not go in there, as it was his home office, and being a diplomat, there might be sensitive stuff. But this was an emergency, and its not like I would be looking at any papers, just going through his drawers and the knick knacks he got as memorabilia and presents from other diplomats.
His office, with its dark wood paneling and overstuffed leather chairs looked like the place that should reek of cigar smoke, but it was always smelling faintly of pine and sandalwood.
I started going through the shelves with various junk, but it was mostly figurines and plaques from various nations.
As I worked my way around the place, and eventually got to the desk, in the middle drawer, behind a box of cigars, that dad would never smoke, was a box that looked very much like a deck of cards.
It was a little larger than an ordinary deck of cards, and had very pretty artwork on the back. I feared it was some silly tradable card game deck of some sort, but as I pulled the cards out of the box, it was most definitely playing cards. I would have said ordinary playing cards, but they looked way too fancy to be described like that. It looked like it had been lovingly and painstakingly hand crafted. But in the end, it was still playing cards, just fancy as heck.
There was even a user manual in the box, but it was in a foreign language. Looked to me like it might be Polish or Romanian or something like that.
Leaving the manual on the desk, I took the spoils of war with me, and went to inform my sister of our victory.
She was rifling through our mothers panty drawer, as I entered the master bedroom, and as I entered she slammed the drawer shut, as if she were a four year old, caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She was looking a bit flushed, more so than the pink tinge wine always gave her.
I silently thanked my stars that I was not the one who had to discover the secrets of our mother.
To quickly banish that thought from the both of us, I held out the cards.
"I found these in dad's office. They are pretty quaint, but beggars can't be choosers, I am sure they will do just fine!"
"Right, a minute sooner would have been fine. But let's get out of here, and back to our game. I believe I was about to con you into doing all my chores for tomorrow."
Always the cocky one, Kaitlyn had no lack of confidence in her ability as a gambler, although her success rate meant she was the one who had to do most of the chores. Or would have, if I didn't help her anyway, since I would just sit around being bored, if I wasn't hanging out with her anyway.
I only made her do enough of them, that the bets still had some sort of meaning.
Back in the living room we made sure the table was nice and dry, before breaking out the new cards. Until either our internet was restored, or the total lockdown was eased, these were the very last cards we were likely to find.
Resuming our game, I dealt us new hands, and my sister's poker face being what it was, it sure seemed like she was very happy with the cards she had been dealt. She even declined to swap any, so either she was stepping up her bluffing game, or she had the best hand she had had all night. Maybe all week.
"Alright, dishes tomorrow, laundry, AND I raise you dishes the rest of the week! Think you can handle that, Kiddo?"
She often called me Kiddo when she was being extra cocky or playful, or just wanted to remind me that she was the first born, and therefore extra wise and knowledgeable. She was almost two years older, after all, that had to count for something. In her full twenty three years of living, she had clearly accumulated vast knowledge beyond the likes of me. Even if I usually got the better grades in all things knowledge related.
"You can bet your sweet ass I do, wise and venerable sister of mine."
Yeah, the wine was getting to me, I never had any experience with drinking alcoholic beverages before this lockdown, so don't judge me.
"Okay, it's a bet! Read them and weep!"
With that, and more flourish than was strictly necessary, she put her cards on the table.
"Queens over kings, like they should be. Full house!"
Her triumphant expression made her look exceedingly pretty.
It was almost a shame to shatter it.
