Hello Paddy!" Taylor answered the door in slacks and an open-necked polo shirt rather than his trademark three-piece suit. "Come in, come in. You can hang your jacket on the hook there." Patrick grinned at him.

"Hello, Mr. Taylor! I hope you don't mind, Mr. Brodie wanted to chaperone me this evening." William stepped around Patrick, smiled a little sheepishly and shook Taylor's outstretched hand.

"Hello, Mr. Taylor."

"Hello again, Mr. Brodie. You're staying? Well, you're very welcome too. Do you play poker, sir?"

"Please, call me Will."

"In that case I'm Simon," Taylor smiled. "Do you play, Will?"

Uh, no, Simon, I don't play cards," Brodie replied as he shuffled through the door, still feeling a little uncomfortable at having turned up unannounced.

"Then perhaps I can ask you to get the drinks. Paddy, I guess you'll have tea?"

"Yes please, sir."

"And whatever you want, Will. There's soda and beer in the refrigerator if you'd prefer it. As I don't have to drive Patrick back this evening I think I'll have a drink."

"Shall I get you a beer?" Brodie asked.

"No, thank you," Taylor replied, "after today I feel like something a little stronger. Everything's all ready for us through there," he added, opening a doorway at the end of the hall and ushering his guests inside. "I thought we'd play in the kitchen this evening, Paddy," Taylor explained, eyes twinkling. "There's a bathroom over there by the back door, everything else we need is right here in the kitchen. Excuse me," He added as he disappeared into another room.

Patrick laughed. "I can understand why we're doing that, sir," he called after Taylor, "though I'll see the rest of your house soon enough."

"Not tonight," Taylor's voice floated through to the kitchen.

"What was that about the rest of the house, Patrick?" Brodie asked as they surveyed the kitchen.

"Mr. Taylor worked at the carnival back in the day, sir. I guess he knows enough about how psychic acts works to want to keep his personal life personal, at least tonight."

Taylor used to work at the carnival? Brodie felt maybe that could explain the easy rapport between him and the boy, in spite of all the obvious differences. Taylor would be familiar with those aspects of Patrick's background that baffled Brodie. Why would Taylor knowing about Patrick's act mean they were banished to the kitchen this evening?

Taylor returned carrying a cut glass tumbler with something the color of amber sloshing around in the bottom. Brodie wanted to ask Taylor how psychic acts worked but felt he should start making some tea. He turned to the cupboards.

"Cups are over the sink, tea's in the next cupboard to the right," Taylor explained to Brodie as he sat at the table opposite Patrick.

"Mr. Brodie would like to know how psychic acts work," Patrick grinned at Taylor. This was a good opportunity for him to check what Taylor knew too.

"Well I know you're good at cold reading, Paddy, I've been on the receiving end of that. I guess you have, too, Will? Where Paddy seems to be reading your mind?"

"Yes I have!" Brodie realized indignantly that was exactly what Patrick had just done yet again.

"That's called cold reading. He's not really psychic, or maybe that's all being psychic really is. I never met a fortune-teller who couldn't do it, though of course some are better than others. Paddy's watching the reactions you can't help making to what he's saying, such as how you breathe, your fleeting facial expressions and body language.

"And the rest," Patrick nodded.

"Then he uses what he sees and what he already knows about you to refine what he says or shape the questions he asks next." Taylor could see Brodie trying not to grimace as he took this in. "There's no point deliberately changing your expression, Will," he said kindly. "The reactions you make are unconscious and they show up just as much when you're trying to hide them. That's what they mean when they say someone had a good poker face, their reactions are much weaker than the average person."

"You looked curious and I didn't think it was about Mr. Taylor's house or where he keeps his teabags, sir," Patrick explained.

Brodie gave up trying not to give anything away. Grinning weakly, he asked, "So you do this 'cold reading' for your carnival act, Patrick?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty good at cold reading, been doing it a long time. I'm fast, too." Patrick didn't seem to be boasting, he stated it as if he were describing someone else rather than himself.

"How long is that, Paddy?" Taylor asked.

"I don't know exactly, sir. No, really," Patrick added as Taylor looked skeptical. "I have a pretty good memory and I can remember a long way back." Patrick seemed perfectly comfortable talking about himself here with Taylor, Brodie noticed. "The earliest things I can recall are just random small details. We got our current RV when I was two. I remember the previous one had three steps up to the door." Patrick had closed his eyes and was moving his hands oddly as he said this. Brodie suddenly realised what Patrick was doing. As he recalled the memory of the three steps he was miming the action of a very small child climbing up three steps using his hands as well as his feet, something Patrick must have done many times every day when he was an infant. Brodie could remember almost nothing of his elementary school, let alone anything before then. Seeing Patrick recall his early infancy like this made the hairs stand up on the back of Brodie's neck.

Patrick opened his eyes and continued talking. "I remember the first time I read anything on my own – without an adult, I mean. It was the funny page of a newspaper, Peanuts and Lil' Abner. That was around my third birthday, early Fall anyway, we were at the county fair just outside Fairmont in Minnesota. I can remember picking out the single moms from the married ones for dad at play groups in the towns we visited but I don't remember being taught how to do that."

Taylor and Brodie shared a look which Patrick chose to ignore. He'd criticize his dad for many things but not for teaching him this. He loved being able to read people, loved that he could still get better at it – as the last couple of weeks had proven in spades.

"I can just about remember the first time I read words on a page on my own," Patrick clarified. "I can't remember my first cold reading. I can only remember being able to do it. I must have been pretty young when I started."

Pretty young was an understatement, Taylor thought, if the boy was already cold-reading at mom and toddler groups. The boy really had been training for the act his whole life. No wonder he felt school couldn't compete.

"I expect you're good at hot reading too?" Taylor asked. Patrick nodded and Taylor turned to Brodie, explaining, "It's where he learns about a person from their belongings, not their reactions to what he's saying. Everyone knows that someone's home and possessions can say a lot about them. Psychics will use that to their advantage, if they can."

"Yeah." This time Patrick didn't elaborate. Mostly for the act he got hot reads from pickpocketing rather than visiting houses and he wasn't going to admit that to anyone, especially not in front of Brodie. The stuff always got put back before anyone was the wiser. "We're in here tonight because there's not so much personal stuff in a kitchen. Thank you, Mr. Brodie," Patrick added incongruously as Brodie placed a cup of tea in front of him.

Brodie found himself wondering how much Patrick had discovered about him and his family since the boy moved in. It would seem Patrick knew a great deal more about them than Brodie had ever learned about Patrick, the boy had told him more about his childhood in the last ten minutes than he had in the last ten days. Well, not him: he'd been answering Taylor's questions. Brodie sat down further along the table with his own cup of tea.

Patrick continued, "Kitchens say more about your likes and dislikes than your personal history, though that can still be useful. A lot of people stick stuff on the refrigerator with magnets, but not you, Mr. Taylor."

"Not me," Taylor confirmed. "It sounds as though your memory was pretty good before you started training it, Paddy?"

"I do seem to remember more about when I was very young than other people," Patrick said thoughtfully. "I still forget things, sometimes. There was a lot to learn when we became a double-act so dad started by teaching me the techniques he uses to remember things."

What techniques are those?"

"Chunking for anything long, acronyms for anything short enough, Major for numerical, exaggerated imagery, rhymes and narratives for the act." Brodie had heard of only one of these techniques.

"You don't use a memory palace?" Taylor asked as he sipped his drink.

"Is that the method of loci? I heard about it but Dad doesn't use it so I never did. We don't live in any one place long enough. We never park up in the same place twice and even the Midway set up is different at each stop, it depends… well, you know how many things can influence the layout man. Even up at Stoney Ridge you don't get the same pitch two years in a row. I know the Carson Springs City Library pretty well but that's just one building…"

"The library's a big building," Taylor said thoughtfully. "It could work just fine for you but It doesn't have to be a real place. A memory palace is simply a way to use the familiar to organize the new things you want to remember. You can build a memory palace in your mind using pictures, doing it like that was very popular in the Renaissance. There was a book a little while ago, 'The Art of Memory' by Yates, it's very good – thorough but accessible. I have a copy somewhere I can lend you, if you like."

"I can borrow it from the library, sir, I go nearly every day. I'd guess you're like me, though, Mr. Taylor. You learned memory from a person, not from a book. What are we playing?"

"Five card draw, one eyed jacks are wild, as there's only two of us could you strip the pack a little, Paddy?" Taylor's tone had changed as he talked about poker. He handed over a pack of cards and Patrick started riffling through it. Taylor's tone changed back to conversational now as he continued, "Yes you're right, Paddy, I did learn it from a person, he had a 'memory man' act. I beat him at poker back when I first joined Frobisher's Five Star American Carnival. Mister Marvel the Memory Man had a single-o on the back end. He'd been with the show a while, had a bit of a reputation as a card player, thought he was unbeatable and so did a lot of the showmen. I was happy to go along with it, right up to the 'unbeatable' part," Taylor added, the memory of his old triumph bringing the ghost of a smile to his lips. "He hadn't been expecting a kid like me to prove him wrong."

"Old school," Patrick, following Taylor's lead, was using a slight change of tone to differentiate between the poker talk and their other conversation. He was flattered by the idea that Taylor was making no allowances for him, that he might even be trying to give himself an advantage over Patrick – stud was more popular than draw poker these days. However Patrick had been playing poker and learning his way around its many variants for years. The basic rules for scoring were easy enough to grasp and the sheer quantity of variations, the richness of the language surrounding the game and the way he could gain his dad's attention when he took an interest in poker had combined to make it uniquely appealing to Patrick. Poker had become his childhood obsession in the same way that locks had for Danny or dinosaurs had for half of his fourth grade class after a school trip to a museum. In his short life he had already played a lot of poker.

"Deuces and treys? Marvel couldn't pay up so you made a deal with him, he taught you his memory techniques in payment for his card debt. Did you fill in the gaps later from books? You have two jokers in this pack, Mr. Taylor, shall I strip them out or are they wild too?"

Taylor nodded. "Sure, lets make the jokers wild too, why not? And strip ace to sevens, it'll make it more interesting." Patrick carried on stripping out more low-value cards. Ace to sevens would play around a little with the probabilities of the winning hands. Still, this was supposed to be a learning experience. "It was either that or lose his means of earning a living," Taylor nodded. "There weren't any gaps to be filled, the guy wasn't an amateur," Taylor continued. "I acquired the books on memory much later, more out of general interest in the subject.

"Simon, what's a memory man act?" Brodie interrupted.

"The audience asks him any question and he knows the answer," Taylor replied. "People would ask things like 'which horse won the 1932 Kentucky Derby' or 'how much did it cost to build the Hoover dam'. Marvel's speciality was asking everyone's name at the entrance to his show, then offering to refund the entrance fee if he couldn't remember it later. He never had to pay up."

"You were a kid when you joined the carnival?" Patrick asked. "Shall we switch flush and full house in the rankings, sir?" The probabilities would suggest the swap with a stripped deck but not everyone bothered, which gave an advantage to players who knew about the changed odds.

"I wondered if you knew the probabilities changed with a stripped deck," Taylor grinned. "I won a lot of games with that little advantage. Yeah, lets move the flush up the rankings, so it goes straight, full house, flush, four of a kind. I was twenty-two, son, I joined the carnival shortly after I was demobilized," Taylor continued, a natural raconteur. Brodie looked up when he said this but didn't interrupt this time. "When I left the army I found I couldn't stay in one place very long, certainly not in Cincinatti with my father. We'll play for matchsticks. We both start with one book of each color." Taylor pushed three books of matches over towards Patrick's side of the table, keeping three identical books on his side. "I'd find a job and a place to live then a few weeks later I'd be crawling out of my skin. Looking back I guess I had shell shock or delayed combat neurosis or whatever the hell they call it these days. All I knew was that I couldn't stand being in one place too long. I moved on a few times, each job worse than the last as I quit more and more jobs without working my notice. I thought I'd hit rock bottom with the carnival job but at least I could move around while sleeping inside each night and earning enough to eat every day. Blue match heads are worth one, pink two and brown five." Patrick finished checking through the remaining cards, making sure he had removed everything he should. He placed the two piles of cards in front of himself and eyed the matchbooks uncertainly. Taylor was still speaking.

"I beat Marvel at the end of my first week as an act in Millican's Ten-In-One –"

"You were a freak act?" Patrick interrupted, astonished.

"It's where I started," Taylor corrected. "I was a fakir from the mysterious island of Sri Lanka or some such nonsense. Bed of nails, that kind of thing. Only one step up from being the geek. The matchbooks say average contents, you can tear them out and count them If you like but I'm not going to bother. We both start with one book of each color. I wasn't the only new guy that year but I was the youngest. All the other acts decided I must be pretty green to take the job. When they found they couldn't haze me any other way they got the bally talker to hustle me into the gee tent at the end of my first week to play Mr. Marvel."

"Stripped, sir," Patrick announced as he picked up the two piles of cards and carefully placed them face up in front of Taylor, absently tapping the one they'd be using with a finger before he turned his attention to the matchbooks. Taylor had given him permission, after all. Any carny boy worth his salt would count them.

"No-one at the show would play Marvel at poker," Taylor continued as he expertly shuffled the cards – interlacing repeatedly, Brodie noted without surprise. "The guy who talked me into it was running a book on the side about how quickly Marvel would take me for everything I had. Well, first that guy lost out, because I played so long all bets were off," Taylor finished shuffling and put the reduced pack face down in front of him. He glanced at Patrick who was working his way through the matches, putting them into bundles of five, then turned to Brodie and said, "Will?"

Brodie started, he'd been concentrating on following Taylor's story and trying to filter out the poker talk. He looked up at Taylor.

"Simon?"

"Are you prepared to be the arbiter of the game, in case of a dispute?"

"Uh, I'm not sure that's–" Brodie began.

"Then we'll use this, except for the ranking," Taylor interrupted smoothly, tapping on the book that was lying on the side of the table. Patrick glanced at the title, it was a beginner's guide to poker.

"Sure, no objections from me," Patrick nodded.

"Ante up," Taylor said, throwing a blue-headed match into the middle of the table. "You cut when you're ready, then I'll deal. It took me about two hours to turn the tables on Marvel. First I took his money, then the keys to his truck, then its contents – his show tent, books, costumes and staging, the whole nine yards. By the end of the evening he didn't have an act any more. He tried to bail out on me that night and when I stopped him he cut a deal. I had a bunk from Millican, I couldn't afford to run a truck but I knew I wanted a better job. I let Marvel keep his livelihood so long as he taught it to me. I had to promise not to muscle in on him that season, after that I'd be free to tour a similar act at a different show."

It seemed to William that neither Taylor not Patrick had any problem following each other even though they were holding two wildly different conversations at the same time. Between the jargon of poker and the argot of the carnival William was struggling to follow them and certainly hadn't felt able to join in.

"What was your stage name?" Patrick asked.

"The bed of nails act was 'Mowgli', like the kid in the Jungle Book, but the act belonged to Millican, not me."

"No, the name of your memory act."

"That plan didn't work out for me in the end, I never had a memory act. Turned out I was better at the old ballyhoo than the talker who got me into the gee tent that first week. In no time at all Millican made him swap jobs with me. Guy left before the next stop so Millican hired some other sucker to be 'Mowgli' and I became a permanent talker for the show. You could make good money from it back then, I got paid a percentage and Millican's was the biggest joint on the back end, I made more as the talker for his show than I ever did being 'Mowgli'. Millican was happy because I worked harder and was better at it than that other guy. When I did the outside bally I could turn as many as eight or nine tips an hour on a good day and I'd sometimes clear the midway. I still spent every spare moment of that whole first season practicing Marvel's memory techniques, I found they were good for the job. I've used those memory techniques every day of my life since I learned them. Best poker winnings I ever had."

"House rules? I never saw a ten in one joint, heard plenty about them though. The showmen have recorded bally rather than talkers these days, or they do it themselves. A PA system and a tape on a loop doesn't draw the same tip but it's a lot cheaper than a percentage of the gross. No showman could afford a talker if he had to pay a percentage. I was our bally act for a while as a kid. I did my magic act in time to the recording, dad made me do it as a mute show. He said adults don't want to listen to patter from a kid but everyone would be impressed if the magic was good enough." Patrick saw Taylor's glance and added, "He was right too."

"Hmm. Most adults think kids doing an act are cute."

Maybe they do on amateur night in your local church hall," Patrick sounded scornful. "On the Midway these days people won't part with hard cash unless you're good at what you do, regardless of your age."

"That's changed, then, since my day. The act that could separate the most extra money from the paying customers was the dog-faced boy – because he was so young, poor kid. No blinds, ante starts at one, increases after every three games or by mutual agreement, we won't take it higher than five this evening. No limit on bids."

"What made you leave, sir?"

"At first I'd stay in Gibsonton for a few weeks after the season finished touring then I'd have to get moving again. I'd drift around riding the boxcars or hitchhiking, earning my board and lodgings until the start of the next carnival season. Each year the length of time I'd stick around got longer until after a few years I found I didn't need to chase that horizon any more. At the same time I could see the writing was on the wall for the ten-in-one, people started objecting to the freaks and geeks being on show like that. I decided if I could stomach being in one place over winter then I could handle it on a more permanent basis so I took advantage of the veterans program to get into law school. The memory techniques and my old bally helped. Did you know, in Greek and Roman times memory techniques were taught to lawyers? And talking people into seeing a show was similar enough to talking people into agreeing with my point of view on the law. I was afraid my time on the Midway had been wasted when I first went to college, turns out it was the best pre-law school in the country," Taylor grinned.

How long did you work the Midway, Mr. Taylor?

"Five years, five seasons anyway, June forty-six to August fifty."

"May I ask what you're drinking, sir?" Patrick suddenly asked.

This made Taylor chuckle good-naturedly. "Don't trust appearances, huh? Here."

Before Brodie could react Taylor had passed his glass to Patrick.

"Hey!" Brodie began, but Patrick simply took a sniff at the glass and passed it back.

"I wasn't going to take a sip, Mr. Brodie," Patrick grinned at his shocked expression. "It's whiskey, Mr. Taylor, not apple juice, but I never smelled anything like that before." Patrick introduced a new tone of voice, started up a third conversation with Taylor. "{Where did you learn poker}?"

"{From my dad}," Taylor replied, also with a new tone. "{I guess you did too}?" Patrick nodded. "That, Paddy, is very fine single malt scotch imported direct from Speyside in Scotland by a good friend of mine. You ready to start? Any more question about the game? I bet you haven't ever come across anything like it before," he added.

The conversation was splintering, going in all different directions at once. When Patrick was in a chatty mood this scattergun manner was how he talked, Brodie realized. Brodie had only ever pursued one thing at a time with Patrick, leaving the others to fall by the wayside. Taylor seemed to be picking up each fragment of Patrick's conversation and fixing it on a new thread, tackling them all at the same time just as Patrick did. Brodie looked between Patrick and Taylor. Were they keeping three or four conversations in the air now? He wasn't sure of anything except that he had even less chance of being able to follow them all.

"Single malt scotch," Paddy rolled the words around, almost as if he was savoring the name just as Taylor was savoring the whisky. "I guess there must be lots of different kinds of scotch."

"Hundreds, probably," Taylor chuckled. "I didn't spend long in England on my way back home when the war ended but all they had to drink was warm beer, gin or scotch whiskey. I never did get a taste for warm English beer," he added, eyes twinkling.

"{Was your dad any good?}" Patrick took a last look at his matches arrayed in front of him. "I'm all set. I like the smell of that. You can tell it's a kind of whiskey but it smells different to rye or bourbon." Patrick cut the stack of cards. "At the start of the season this year I wanted to learn what liquor smells like, it's harder for someone to slip you a mickey finn if you can smell what's in it. I know whiskey, tequila, rum, gin, vodka and moonshine by smell now. Dad doesn't really drink much, not often, anyways. He says getting drunk is for suckers."

Taylor started dealing. "I guess Alex is right about that, drinking makes suckers of us all, though I would say that we're all suckers about one thing or another, whether we've been drinking or not. You're a bit young to be worried about mickey finns, aren't you, Paddy? {My dad was house player at Sammy Carlo's speakeasy in Cincinnatti. When prohibition ended the mob still ran gambling downstairs so he carried on working for them. He was good at cards, but he was better because of all the little scams they pulled. Without those he wasn't as good as he thought he was.}"

"{Ha, you could say that about my dad too. So if gambling was downstairs, what was upstairs?} Bet two. {Dad's good at reading people, good at bluffing, not so good at playing a good hand. That's his weakness.} You'd be surprised what some people want to get little kids to drink. I look younger than I am, people don't expect a little kid like me to know what alcohol smells like."

"{Upstairs? Nothing good,}" Taylor said, making sure Patrick saw him casting a glance at Brodie as he said it. "See two and raise four. Sounds like the lot's gotten a whole lot rougher since my day, even the mobsters in Cincinatti never tried to get a kid drunk. {What's my weakness?}"

"{I don't think you have one, sir.} Call. {You started with a good teacher, you had an aptitude for the game, you got better and kept on improving. You've been playing a very long time, long enough to discover your weaknesses and learn how to neutralize them. You'll have tells, though, and you'll have a playing style. Both of those can be either a strength or a weakness.} Two cards. Oh, we should have said, is there a limit on the number of draws? It wasn't anyone from the families, sir. I guess there's some people out there who have a strange sense of humor."

"There surely are," Taylor said, shaking his head. "Three cards, four if you hold an ace. {What's your biggest weakness, Paddy?} Dealer takes one."

Patrick chuckled. "{Too many to pick just one. I'm working on them.} Check."

"{That's not an answer.}"

"{What, after all that big talk about beating Marvel the Memory Man you want me to make this easy for you? Feeling threatened, old man?}" Patrick said this with an easy smile though his eyes had a shrewd look to them. It was Taylor's turn to chuckle.

"{You wish.} Do you mind if I carry on asking questions, Paddy? Bet four."

"Not if I can keep asking you questions, too, sir. I like listening to your stories. See you and raise four."

"Touché. Okay. It's been a while since I was able to tell a story to someone who hadn't heard it before." Taylor was more flattered by the boy's interest than he was prepared to admit. "Raise six. I reserve the right not to answer, though."

"Then I reserve the same right. Or I might tell a few, ah, stories of my own, Mr. Taylor, and you can try to spot when I do. I haven't told a downright lie for the last ten days. Raise another six. I'm getting out of practice." Patrick grinned at Taylor now, who laughed out loud.

"You practice lying, Patrick?" Brodie cut in. He might not have followed everything up to now but was sure he'd heard that. Patrick looked at him in surprise.

"Tall tales, Mr. Brodie," Patrick said with a hint of reproach in his voice. "There is a difference. It's a kind of entertainment, storytelling. People don't expect the stories to be literally true, they expect them to be interesting and fun. Or to have a moral. Is every story in your bible true? Was the good samaritan a real person or a character in a story that your Jesus made up to make a point?" Taylor glanced between Brodie and Patrick but said nothing.

"Where did you learn about bible stories, Patrick?" Brodie asked. The boy had said he was an atheist, after all.

"I read one of your bibles while you were away last week, Mr. Brodie, and you come across traveling preachers on the circuit sometimes. Either with one of the shows or just in the same town at the same time, in a tent of their own, preaching against the evils of the carnival. My family's Catholic I think, my aunt is anyways, I've been taken to that kind of church too."

"You used to get preachers regularly working the circuit in the forties," Taylor chipped in now. "See you, and raise twelve." Patrick glanced sharply at Taylor, who continued unperturbed. "Oftentimes they had the same boss as the kootch show."

Patrick gave a cynical snort. "I guess bosses have always been bosses. That's another kind of tent you see less these days. Pops Ruskin never signed one, anyway, not that I can remember. Call. Pops likes to get the local organizers to run a beauty pageant if it's a county show, I've seen my fair share of those. They don't make anything for the show directly but at least they don't compete and they're good for getting the locals to come out."

"The last act for the women and kids in Millican's ten-in-one would be a magic act while the men would get the blowoff. It cost ten cents to get into the tent but all the men would pay a dollar on the way out." This made Patrick chuckle. "Okay, Paddy, you get the first question."

"Thank you, sir. Why did you study law when you left the Midway?"

"I became interested in the law during my time at the carnival." Taylor responded in a carefully bland manner, casting another glance at Brodie. Taylor didn't need to explain himself to Patrick. There was no love lost between carnies and cops. Patrick thought it also explained why he bothered to take on carny folk as clients and handled them personally even now. Taylor's fees had put a big dent in Alex and Patrick's finances that year but it seemed to be small change for a lot of work from Taylor's point of view, judging by everything Patrick had seen of the lawyer so far. "My turn. Who was home-schooling you these last two years, Paddy? Was it your aunt?" Taylor showed his hand, nothing.

"No, sir, Lily left the show when I turned eleven, at the end of the season after I left elementary. Pair of nines." Patrick pulled all the matchsticks from the center of the table towards himself, started sorting them out into little bundles of five as he had earlier as he continued talking. "She did most of the teaching when I was very little, used to take me to libraries and museums a lot. I go on my own now. Like I said, these last two years Dad was teaching me the act."

"So who's been teaching you literature, poetry, civics?"

Patrick shrugged, surprised. "No-one, or I guess I taught myself. Every librarian will give you a book list if you ask and all non-fiction has a set of references at the back if you want to read more about a subject."

"You said you learned French from another family on the lot."

I've spoken other languages all my life, sir. I can cuss in Irish thanks to Dad and Lily," Patrick grinned. "Spanish was really the first language I learned after English. My uncle comes from Mexico, I picked up a lot of Spanish when he was teaching it to Lily before I even went to elementary school. When some new foreign act joins the carnival you get to know the language when you get to know the kids. {Why did you choose to bluff then, sir,}" he added curiously, "{that is, if you're prepared to tell me?} My first girlfriend was French, the Schmidts are German, we've had Danish and Italian families on the lot for a couple of years now. One year I learned some Swedish, another year it was Navajo…"

"Okay, okay! I get where the languages come from. {Yes, I'll tell you. I wanted to see how you reacted to me suddenly placing a larger bid, to find out how you looked when you thought I was bluffing, to get a feel for how you play. I'm not planning on giving you much opportunity to win after this first hand.}"

"{That's fighting talk}," Patrick chuckled, collecting all the cards and shuffling them thoroughly. "Ante up, old man, then we'll see if you're prepared to put your money where your mouth is. He threw a blue matchstick into the middle of the table before dealing the next hand. His smile turned sly as he rattled off, "Eazi ceazan speazeak Ciazarn."

Taylor froze and stared at Patrick. Brodie stared too: what language was that?

"I haven't heard anyone speak Ciazarn in forty years," Taylor said in wonder. "They still use it?"

"I learned it as a little kid. Dad and Lily would use it when they wanted to talk about something without me listening in. You can imagine how well that worked out for them," Patrick added with a chuckle.

"We would pronounce it more 'Cizarn' than 'Ceazarn' in my day. {How did you know I was bluffing?}"

"The carny kids all speak it, we used to use it at school sometimes, whenever we didn't want the other kids to know what we were talking about. {I didn't know you were bluffing, but I thought you were. I provoked you when I only raised by the same as you rather than more. You raised so much and I thought you looked a little impatient when you did it, as though you were pushing me to fold, so I called instead.} You don't hear it on the lot so much these days. People speak it sometimes to gull the green help or maybe when the townie organizers turn up and try to renegotiate a contract. Day-to-day I'd say they use slang more than Ciazarn."

"Check. Your first girlfriend? You had quite a few then, Paddy?" Taylor asked.

"Check," Patrick said, and both Patrick and Taylor threw in their hands. "I had to split up with my latest girlfriend last week. Her mom didn't approve of me." Saying that had wiped the grin off Patrick's face.

"Don't take it too personally, Paddy. The parents of teenage girls will always disapprove of the boys they date." Taylor's tone was consoling. "I had a daughter so I did a certain amount of disapproving of my own. I had two sons as well and they both saw their fair share of disapproval. {Did your dad teach you that about poker?}"

Patrick didn't elaborate on exactly why he'd taken splitting up with Ashley so personally. "{No dad didn't teach me that, not directly anyway, that was something I picked up myself in the gee tent. I watched a lot of poker games.}"

"{Kids weren't allowed in the gee tent in my day.}" There was a hint of a question in the way Taylor said it. Patrick handed the cards to Taylor before he spoke.

"{They still aren't. No-one wants kids running around while they're trying to gamble.}" Taylor raised an eyebrow and Patrick continued, "{A quiet kid who sits still behind his dad doesn't always get thrown out.}

"Hmm." Patrick thought that was the sound Taylor made when he was doing some disapproving of his own. "You picked up some math on the Midway, I guess?" That put a smile back onto Patrick's face. They both knew the kind of math Taylor meant, the kind where suckers lost their money in hard-to-follow ways. "I guess you picked up a lot of other things, too, things that are even less useful in school." Patrick's grin widened.

"I think it's my turn to ask a question, not answer them," Patrick deflected.

"Okay, go ahead, Paddy."

"You were twenty-two when you joined the carnival in forty-six, and the veterans program put you through college. What did you do in world war two?" Patrick threw another blue match into the middle as Taylor shuffled and dealt in silence. Patrick was thinking this might be a question Taylor wouldn't answer when the man finally spoke.

"I was in the army, in a gun crew. I could speak Dutch so of course I was deployed in North Africa then Italy."

Patrick simply asked, "Dutch? Bet two," he added, putting a single pink match into the middle.

"My mom's parents were Flemish-speaking refugees from the first world war, it's a kind of dialect of Dutch. When Mom died I spent nearly seven years living with them until my grandmother fell ill and I went back to live with my father. I could speak it a little when I moved in with them, I was fluent by the time I moved out. Call. I joined up at eighteen but the army, well, maybe they didn't need any more Dutch speakers for the war in Europe, or maybe they decided to send all the people who could speak Arabic or Italian there." Taylor shook his head. "They certainly didn't send them anywhere I went. Nothing the army ever does makes sense when you're in it," he explained.

"We got a few Vietnam veterans in the rigging crews these days," Patrick mused. "One card. I guess whatever the war some veterans will always end up joining the show."

"Dealer takes two." It was Taylor's turn to ask Patrick something so he was surprised when Taylor spoke to Brodie instead.

"You a veteran, Will?"

"Uh, no. I was too young for Korea and... I wasn't called up for Vietnam."

Patrick could hear the discomfort in the man's voice and see it on his face. Taylor didn't speak and the tense silence extended. The carnival had its share of draft-dodgers as well as veterans. Patrick was aware how that particular tension had occasionally bubbled up into fights on the lot throughout his childhood. He was wary of how both Taylor and Brodie looked right now.

"I wasn't a Kennedy husband, Mr. Taylor." Brodie's voice was getting louder. "I met Sally in fifty-eight, we married in nineteen-sixty. I won't deny I benefitted from Kennedy's change to the rules but we were already married with a toddler when the Vietnam draft came in."

"Of course. I'm sorry, I never meant to imply–"

"Then you're the first veteran to mention it that didn't," Brodie replied heatedly.

"Mr. Brodie," Patrick interjected cautiously, "no-one mentioned the draft apart from you."

Brodie stared at Patrick for a long moment, then ran a hand over his face. "You're right, I'm sorry. Sometimes it feels I've been judged my whole life because I fell in love and got married."

"Did you meet your wife at college?" Taylor enquired politely after a moment.

"She was at college, I was working."

"As an accountant?"

"A trainee accountant, when we met. I started in the mail room at fifteen but I worked my way onto the trainee accountant program. We married the summer Sally graduated."

"Would I know the firm, sir?"

"It was Sands and Walker when I joined. It's SWJP now, of course." This meant nothing to Patrick but Taylor was making it obvious he was impressed – for Brodie's sake, Patrick assumed. He decided it was safe to continue the card game. "Bet four," he said, throwing two pink matches into the centre, then he added, "It's your turn to ask me something, Mr. Taylor."

"Raise eight. What do you know about your mom's side of your family, Paddy?"

"Not much. Fold," Patrick added, throwing in his hand. Taylor scooped up the matches. "I was telling the truth about her photos last week, sir. Apart from those I've seen her death certificate and birth certificate, their marriage certificate. I guess you have too?"

Taylor shook his head. "No son, only your documents and your dad's.

Patrick picked up a pink match then said, "can we raise the ante?" When Taylor nodded 'sure' he threw it into the centre, picked up the cards and started shuffling them. "I think her family were Irish gypsies but not carnies. Dad fell out with them when she died. I never met them." He'd spent hours looking at the faces of the relatives he'd never met since he first found his parents' wedding photos years ago.

Taylor threw his ante into the middle of the table and Patrick started dealing the next hand, slowly, as though his formerly nimble fingers had forgotten this simple task. He spoke as he did this without looking at Taylor, apparently engrossed in what his hands were doing.

"Um, may I ask, sir, do you, ah, do you… remember your mom?" Patrick looked up then, caught Taylor's expression and quickly added, "Lily taught me to say 'you don't miss what you never had'. It isn't true but it is useful, it stops people asking me about her. Believe me, I understand if you don't want to tell me, sir. Its just… You told me last week that she died when you were young and I wondered... People don't talk about their dead moms so you never know if what you feel is – is what other people feel, too." There was a raw, almost hungry look in Patrick's eyes now. Yet again Taylor was moved by what the boy said. Patrick wasn't trying to manipulate him, he wasn't even trying to put him off his card game. Taylor had asked his question first and it had brought the boy's mom to his mind. Patrick had found it hard simply framing the question. Taylor remembered the boy had told him that his dad didn't like talking about his mom. He guessed the boy's aunt hadn't said much about her, either. He wondered if Patrick had ever found anyone to talk to about his loss.

"Check. I do remember my mom," Taylor began quietly. "Not as much as I'd like, it was a long time ago. She was the most glamorous-looking mom out of all my class. She was a terrible cook." Taylor found himself smiling at that memory. "She loved dancing. I was eight when she fell ill and my grandmother moved in to look after us, much to dad's disgust. She took care of mom to the end, then she took me home with her after the funeral. I was nine by then. Nana never did approve of my dad."

"Bet two. Uh, how – how did she…" Brodie was surprised at Patrick's hesitancy, astonished that they were able to carry on playing cards given the other conversation they were having.

"Tuberculosis. The kind of disease that used to be a killer before penicillin came along. Call. My grandmother was very like mom in a lot of ways but… well, there really is no such thing as a substitute. I missed her every day of my childhood. When you grow up… well, there was a war on, I joined up when I was seventeen. Everything was different after that." Patrick nodded but didn't speak, he'd been listening intently to everything Taylor said. Taylor took a deep breath before adding, "How about you? Draw one card."

"Dealer takes one. Mom died when I was two days old. Her death certificate says 'septic shock'. I looked it up once, it means she got an infection when I was born. It must have been real quick."

"That's a blessing," Taylor's said quietly. At Patrick's surprised look he added with conviction, "a slow death in a loved one is a terrible thing to have to witness."

"What Lily taught me to say isn't true," Patrick repeated. "You do miss what you never had."

In the brief silence that followed Brodie realised he'd been holding his breath. He let it out as quietly as he could, not wanting to interrupt. He had also been deeply moved by their tales of loss, and the clear bond of friendship that had already formed between Patrick and Taylor.

"So where did Lily fit in all this? She's your dad's sister? Bet four."

"Uh, raise four. Yeah, Lily moved in with dad just a couple of days later to help out with me, even though she was still a kid herself then – she was seventeen, I think. She's a seamstress, a good one, she made all our costumes for years, she did costumes for everyone during the off-season. When we were on the road she ran the cotton candy concession stands. Lily and Dad raised me."

"Raise eight. She moved out two years ago?"

She moved out when she got married, but only to the trailer next door. We still all lived like a family until two years ago, when she was going to have their first baby. Estaban's sister's a midwife down in Mexico, his mom lives there too so they went back to his home town to give birth down there. Raise sixteen. Pops Ruskin brought in his own cotton candy concessions at our carnival when she left so Lily and Estaban didn't come back. They were working a circuit in Texas and the South until a couple months ago, not Michael Ruskin's but covering much the same states, until they left to have their second baby in Mexico too. She was born two weeks ago."

"Call, what do you have?. So you have two cousins?"

"A boy and a girl. I never met them. Dad and Lily didn't fight when she left but she's never been back and we haven't been to see her. Dad was talking about maybe heading down there this winter, but… Two pair."

"Full house." Taylor scooped up all the matches.

"Lucky."

"Skilful."

Patrick was curious. "Why, what did you see?"

"You know about pupil dilation?"

"I know about it between men and women," Patrick began warily.

"Anything desirable," Taylor replied. "It can apply to anything. A hungry man seeing food, a drunk seeing booze, a man seeing a pretty woman by all means, or a card player seeing, well, a better hand than two pair, anyway. If you hadn't been bluffing your pupils would have blown wide open for a second when you first saw what you had. You get more of a feel for it the more you play someone at cards because the reaction varies from one person to another. For most people it's noticeable the first time they see a good hand, or if they draw the cards they need to make a good hand. Any card game, not just poker."

"You know it can be faked, right?" Patrick grinned.

Taylor looked at him sharply. "I did not know that. I never saw anyone fake that look. How do you know that?"

"Women used to put belladonna drops in their eyes to fake the look, hundreds of years ago I mean, that's why the plant's called 'belladonna', the name means 'pretty lady' in Italian." Patrick looked a little smug.

"It's not quite the same, that's more making them look permanently dark rather than faking the reaction. You watch out for the change, not how dark someone's eyes are. As I said, peoples' reactions differ."

"I guess," Patrick replied, determined now to practice in the mirror until he could make the pupils of his eyes change size at will.

"Being a little drunk can stop your eyes reacting like that," Taylor continued. "Illegal narcotics change your pupil size like those eye drops you mentioned, it's something cops look for on a stop-and-search."

"I didn't know that about cops. I do know you'll never win at poker if you're drunk or high. Is that why you're only sipping at your whiskey tonight, sir? To get just a little drunk, stop your eyes reacting to the cards?"

"Don't flatter yourself, kid," Taylor growled, amused. "Like I said, I had a hell of a day at work today. And fine whiskey like this? You sip it, you don't knock it back."

Their conversation turned lighter as the poker game turned more serious. After forty minutes and another cup of tea Patrick excused himself to the bathroom. As soon as he was out of earshot, Taylor turned to Brodie.

"You have to keep him away from the gangs," Taylor began without preamble.

"What?" Brodie was utterly taken aback. Before Patrick left they had been discussing carnival food.

"We're developing a gang problem here in Carson Springs. It started small when the last big lumber mill closed but its gotten worse as the other big employers have moved away. When the kids feel like they have no future they become easy prey for the gangs."

Brodie sighed. "That's one reason we foster, group homes can be recruiting grounds for gangs."

"Patrick's smart, a little ruthless when it comes to getting his own way and way too good at making excuses to himself for his own bad behavior. I'm not saying he's a bad kid but he hasn't had a whole lot of moral guidance in his life. He wants to be wealthy and for now he's decided his best option to achieve that isn't school, it's improving the act he does with his dad and moving into a more lucrative side of show business than the carnival. Given his circumstances and abilities he might even be right about that. The thing I'm most afraid of is one of the Carson Springs gangs getting hold of him. That's another route to easy money, one that he might find hard to resist."

"He's not a violent boy! Surely he's too bright to want to join a gang?"

"Too bright to choose it or be tricked into it but gangs are good at coercing people to do what they want and once they have their hooks in someone they make it very hard to get away. The carnival is like a gang. Only in their attitude to outsiders and suspicion of the authorities I mean," Taylor added at Brodie's expression. "They're good people, not criminals, no matter what the stereotypes say. But it would mean he'd understand the ethos of a gang, he'd fit right in, and he's too wary to go to the cops if he was being coerced by a gang."

"His father's a criminal." Brodie was looking serious now but Taylor shook his head.

"His father never had anything to do with gangs or organized crime. I'm asking you to make sure Patrick doesn't either."

Patrick returned from the bathroom at that point so Taylor simply gave Brodie a look before the game resumed. They continued to chat and Patrick continued to lose. Thirty minutes later he lost his last matchstick.

You played well, son," Taylor smiled encouragingly. "You won a few hands."

"You're an interesting player to watch, Mr. Taylor, as well as to play. I'd like to see how you play someone else."

"I don't think that's going to happen, Paddy."

"I'm going to play better next time, sir." Patrick said this as though it was a statement of fact, not a cocky boast.

Taylor chuckled, unimpressed. "So am I, son." That made Patrick laugh too.

At the door on their way out Taylor shook Brodie's hand.

"Thanks for having us over this evening, Simon."

"It was good to get to know you a little better, Will. Paddy, that was the most enjoyable poker game I had in a long time."

"Maybe next week we can start teaching you poker, Mr. Brodie?" Patrick suggested innocently.

"It's very kind of you to offer, Patrick, but –" Brodie began anxiously, then caught sight of both Patrick's and Taylor's expressions. "Oh, very funny," he said, grinning weakly.

"You should have seen your face, Will," Taylor chuckled.

"A picture," Patrick agreed.

"Yeah, you got me," Brodie shook his car keys. "Come on, young man, let's get you home. You have school tomorrow."