I looked up at the cascading columns of black and red.
The show was called Poker Genome Project. All around us, printed on huge expanses of backlit vellum, was every possible combination of five playing cards—organized into poker hands of ascending order. Each card was a quarter-inch high, just legible enough to see the probabilities unfold. The higher-ranked hands—straights, flushes, full houses—each took up a single canvas. The lowly pairs filled an entire wall, the worthless hands another.
“I like the math of it,” I said.
“But what’s behind the math?” Hiromi stared closer at the fours of a kind. “Why do you like it?”
I imagined Grandmother Elizabeth leading young Mortons through the gallery. We were taught poker even before pain resistance. Calculation under pressure, concealed emotions. “It’s my family in a nutshell.”
Hiromi laughed at this. “All in red and black? Or because this is how the gods see poker? Everything at once, no stakes.”
I nodded. The house always wins, because it doesn’t play.
That afternoon, with locks of my hair wrapped in tiny squares of tinfoil, I’d checked Xenakis’s calculations: 52!/47!/5! = 2,598,960 possible poker hands. Bianca would have laughed at me for bothering, but true power was knowing the odds.
“To me, this is bloodless,” Hiromi said. “People get killed over poker games. I miss the drama.”
“Like your robots. They break shit.”
“You looked me up.” She was pleased. “Actually, my first robot piece was supposed to be funny—an assembly line where things go wrong. Like Lucille Ball.”
“I don’t know her work,” I said.
Hiromi laughed. “It turned out more tragic than funny. Robots with cheap cameras, not much range of motion. Like dinosaurs trying to work factory jobs.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I said. There were stories of a Morton going undercover on an assembly line, back in the 1920s. He’d wound up killing not only his target but half a dozen other bosses too. “I’d love to see your studio sometime.”
“Jessica.” Her eyes met mine. “How old are you?”
I was moving too fast. “Twenty-five.”
“You seem younger.”
“Homeschooled,” I said. “The MFA is a lie.”
“It’s more than that. Maybe this costume you’re wearing.” She reached out and tapped the crow skull on its beak. “This is the only part that’s you.”
“Yes,” I said, wishing her hand had lingered. “My art.”
“You can show it to me sometime.” She turned back to the patterns of playing cards. But I wanted all of her attention.
“My cousin Peter made a robot, right before he died.”
She turned back to me, eyes alight. “What kind?”
“An arson machine.”
“Artist/arsonist.”
I recalled Sebastian’s words, about Peter turning our traditions gaudy and savage. Halcyon Hall had been his masterpiece.
“Peter liked staring into kilns,” I said. “Fire was his friend.”
“You have to love your materials.”
For a moment, I considered telling Hiromi a secret—about potato chips, the chapel, and a fire—but someone called her name. It was Crystal, parting the crowd, pulling Miyeon along, Danny and Ayana just behind. They swept around us, talking about Poker Genome Project.
“It’s all probabilities.”
