Ba-bang! The formica tabletop in the middle of the kitchen shudders with the staccato slapping.
“Gah!” Matt rocks back in his chair and thumbs the dwindling stack of cards in his left hand.
Andrew grins and scoops up the pile he’s won with exaggerated care under his opponent’s scowl. They’re alone in the room in The Meeting Place playing a card game called Egyptian Ratscrew (don’t ask) that Matt had learned as a kid in summer camp. It’s a game that involves flipping cards over one at a time to discover patterns of doubles, ‘sandwiches’, straights, flushes, and so on, with the first player to recognize and slap the stack of cards getting to add them to his deck. A match ends when one person has all of the cards. Egyptian Ratscrew is all about quick processing and reflexes, relying only marginally on luck. And Matt hasn’t lost a game in months.
He’s losing now, though. He grinds his teeth and flips over another card, seldom finding himself behind, let alone challenged to make up the difference (not since that time with the Chinese backpacker in Bangkok who couldn’t speak any English). This kid’s reaction times are insane. Matt feels his blood pressure rise as he–
Ba-bang! Andrew’s flip revealed a king, which sandwiched with the cards already on the stack and he’d slapped in first. Matt had distracted himself and again, been a hair too slow to react. His teeth grinding intensifies. He should have expected this from the young man sitting across the the table.