The Altonevers by Frederic Merbe

fog.
Deafeningly loud, with boisterous shouting and the laughter of the
winning mixing in with swearing and fighting of the losing. A
waitress clad in dirty apron and skirt with a big kitchen knife
tied around her waist, brushes past Anna while balancing a tray
full of overflowing mugs. Anna stumbles over a beached whale of a
man, face down in someone else’s foam filled vomit.
    “ What's wrong with that
guy?” she asks.
    “ Him? nothing. Ever play
blackjack?”
    “ Twenty one?”
    “ Good we'll sit at that
table, I like that table.”
    “ Okay,” she says, following
him nervously. Feeling as green as the felt tables stepping over
the dead or unconscious. Leaning away from the frisky patron’s
creeping about and the few faces she can glimpse in passing. Most
of the patrons peek at her, then to Cider and away, sinking their
heads as though praying not to know him.
    “ Do you know them?” she
asks. He doesn’t answer. Leading her to a table and pulling out a
wooden chair for her to sit. She sits and he waves his hand, a
nearly nude knife wielding bar girl brings a stack of colored
casino chips.
    “ They work for a guy I
know,” he says and shrugs.
    “ Which ones?”
    “ Almost everyone here.
They're Ravens Anna. It's why they all have some sort of red about
them.”
    “ What are Ravens?” she
asks.
    “ Debt collectors, hustlers,
hookers, messengers, criminals, politicians, crime bosses, anyone.
Actually the only requirements for the job are to have been a
killer and to have been killed. He has a foothold in almost all the
Alto’s I’ve been to yet, he’s virtually inescapable, it’s
charmingly a nuisance.”
    “ Everyone that wears red?”
she asks.
    “ No, some, they'll usually
have a some red around the rim of their eye lids too. And it’s
usually a bit of red somewhere, depends on how much of yourself you
get to hold on to,” he says. She seems stiff to him, not sinking
into her seat, not relaxing, looking around and moving
mechanically. Like she's scared.
    “ You want a drink?” he
asks, “It'll loosen ya up.”
    “ Yes please.”
    “ Two please,” he
says.
    “ What type of exotic drink
you think it will be?” she asks.
    “ Whiskey.”
    “ How much, sir?” a flat
bellowing voice asks Cider. She sees the dealers enormous hands
first, following his long white sleeve up to his black vested
double wide shoulders. Having a black bow tie that’s tiny in
comparison to the stretching somber square face above
it.
    “ Chang’a ten thousand, and
give a few hundred to her,” he says throwing some yellow chips to
the middle of the table. Anna reaches and puts them in a neat pile
for the lurching man. After sliding Cider’s stack to him, she
slowly counts her own little batch of black and yellow chips. Each
take their drinks and play two hands, and two more shots, and a few
more hands. The dealer, a quick shuffle and monkey dealer, deals
two cards to the three people at the felt table. The two are next
to a thin but triple chinned man not sober enough to look up from
his glass. Who jumps up suddenly, leaving his chips and scurries
away into the smoke.
    “ What’s with that guy?” She
asks.
    “ I dunno, probably scared
of a skirt taking his money,” he says and she smiles. It's humid in
the heat of racing hearts as cards fall and chips shift to the
fortunate of this minute. All but the two here have the intensity
of diamonds in their desperate sleepless eyes, wired to the rush of
the turn. The smoky room comes to be overflowing with the smell of
“Is that perfume?” Anna asks sniffing the air and
sneezing.
    “ No” he says, “It's
rosewater.”
    “ Why do you like places
like this?” she asks.
    “ Eh, you kinda sink to
where you swim, I guess. Maybe it's that you can see it all here, a
bit of the whole show. The less fortunate and the fortunate seeking
glory and despair in the same vice. Lives lived by the flop of a
hand, the roll of the die, and the springs of a call girl’s