Inside Straight

Jonathan looked up. “Joe …” he began.

Twitch held up a hand fast enough to make a whooshing sound like some cheap kung fu sound effect.

“I know, you buy the whole ‘we lost’ thing,” Joe Twitch said. “But I’m telling you, they’re gonna bring us back. Like later in the show, we’re gonna go back in. Why else are they keeping us in this kick-ass mansion, eh? Butlers and maids and everything. There’s a pool.”

“Joe,” Jonathan said. “We lost. They’re keeping us around because they think we’re amusing. We’re a fucking sideshow.”

“That’s what they want you to think,” Joe Twitch said. “But you wait. You’ll see. These shows do it all the time. Bait and switch, they call it. Or hey, bait and twitch. Get it? Twitch and … Ow!”

Twitch slapped himself fast enough to make a little popping sound where the air rushed back in behind his arm, and Jonathan felt one of his wasps die. It was a small price to pay.

“Can’t you keep those things under control?” Twitch asked. “Fucker stung me.”

“Sorry. Sometimes a few just slip out,” Jonathan lied. “You should put something on that welt, though. I think they have something in the bathroom.”

Joe Twitch vanished. The laptop stayed the same.

Some people might say we’ve lost. I think of it as being differently victorious.

[Backspace.]

John Fortune came into the kitchen with a couple of grocery bags on each arm. He smiled and nodded to Jonathan.

“Hey,” Jonathan said. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good,” Fortune said, hauling the sacks up to the countertop. “Just got a little snack food for you guys. And a new controller for the video game console. King Cobalt broke the last one.”

“He gets excited,” Jonathan agreed.

“At least he’s having fun, right?”

Fortune started unloading the food, stocking up the refrigerator and pantry.

“How’s it going?” Jonathan asked.

“What?”

“The show. You know, the next challenge. The teams.”

Curveball, he didn’t say.

“I think things are going pretty well,” Fortune said. “They don’t really let me in on much. Just do this, get that. But Peregrine seems happy with things. And Berman’s as happy as he ever gets.”

“Berman?”

“Network guy,” Fortune said. “He was at the Chateau Marmont. Armani suit.”

“Twentysomething, visibly without conscience, hitting on all the women in descending order by cup size?”

“That’s the guy,” Fortune said. “I have the honor of delivering his dry cleaning to the office next.”

“Lucky you,” Jonathan said.

“It’s a job,” Fortune said, crushing the now-empty grocery bags into little wads and dropping them in the compactor. “Anyway. Sorry they voted you off. It’s got to suck.”

“I’ll survive,” Jonathan said. “Thanks, though.”

Fortune turned to leave and Jonathan popped a wasp free from his skin and sent it skidding out after him. Fortune was driving a Saturn sedan about three years out of date. Not a car that screamed status. Through the wasp’s eyes, Jonathan steered it into the pocket of a jacket hanging in the backseat, then waited.

If he wasn’t going to get to play the game as a contestant, he could at least play it his way. Through the wasp, he felt the car vibrate into life and pull away. He shifted his attention back to the laptop.

Fire. Why did it have to be fire?

[Backspace.]

You might think I’d be bitter. Here I am, embraced by a team of people—yes, the noun in question is team—and they drop me the first chance they get. But what you don’t see on your television is all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Why did they kick me off when Earth Witch and Wild Fox were just as powerless? Well, folks, it’s because

Jonathan stared at the screen for half a minute. [Backspace.] For half an hour, he kept at it and ended up where he’d started, with a blank page.

The car stopped, the suit jacket shifted. Jonathan turned his attention back to the wasp, crawling out of the pocket and taking wing.

Berman’s office was beautiful in a studied, artificial way. His secretary exuded both competence and pheromones, and (Jonathan assumed) was fucking Berman on the side in exchange for a future in the industry. Fortune nodded to the woman, who responded with familiarity and pity and waved him through the door. The wasp followed.

Berman sat at his desk. Two older men and a severe-looking woman with gray at the temples were sitting in chairs that made them look shorter.

“Just hang that stuff in the closet, okay, John?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Berman,” John Fortune said.

“Okay,” Berman said, “So the Turtle’s out for week six?”

“And Mistral refuses the new terms,” one of the men said. “It’s the adversarial thing.”