She began to explain the game. Each person got thirteen cards—their Nertz pile—and laid out four other cards next to it, face up and side by side.
“Then, when we say ‘Go,’ you flip the top card on your Nertz pile—”
Whit listened, nodding along as she explained that each player essentially played solitaire on their four cards, except for their aces, which they placed in the middle, where they were free game for anyone to play cards of the same suit in numerical order. All this time, Whit nodded along, squinting as if overwhelmed by her quick explanation of the rules.
“Ready?” she asked, barely able to contain her glee at the onslaught that was about to occur.
“I guess.”
Then, with no preamble, she said, “Go!” and they were off.
Whit watched her for a moment as she flipped cards, three at atime, from the deck in her hands and moved with an easy grace to place a black ten on a red jack, a red three on a black four. Then the ace of clubs appeared, and she slid it fluidly to the middle.
“Aren’t you going to go?” she asked, not looking up.
“Yep,” he said, and then he was off, too.
He did not move with the same elegance, but he did have the speed. A red queen on a black king, a whole run (jack, ten, nine, eight) over to that pile. The ace of hearts, and the two of hearts, and the three, then Merritt’s ace of clubs covered in a flash.
“What—” she started, but Whit played on steadily and in silence.
The truth was that, from the moment she’d mentioned the “Nertz pile,” he’d known what was what. He’d grown up playing a similar game, with a few tweaks to the rules. Some people called it Dutch Blitz. The Longacres called it Hell, and they were vicious.
“Hell!” Whit shouted at last, slamming the final card from his pile of thirteen onto a stack of spades in the middle. “I mean, Nertz.”
Merritt made a noise like a cut-off gasp, then gave him a fiery look.
“You little shit.”
He grinned back at her. “I know. I’m sorry.”
But he was not sorry.
“You can email me the manuscript whenever. And I’m sure it will be wonderful.”
Merritt stewed in the reality of Whit’s deception for a moment before she spoke.
“Okay, whatever. But you should know—”
He waved her words away with a hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “Just receive the compliment. I mean it. I’m really looking forward to reading it.”
“Fine. I’ll email it to you today. But if it’s really bad, I want you to simply send me a text message firing me and asking never to see me again, because I won’t be able to show my face here after that.”
“It won’t be really bad!”
She gave him a stern just-you-wait-and-see look, and Whit laughed again. He was laughing a lot these days.
“And what if it’s only a little bit bad?” he joked.
She shrugged. “Then your feedback would be... helpful. Isuppose.”
“And if it’s really good?”
Merritt had clearly had enough. She swatted the air, moving to stand up. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Hey, wait.”
