: house of cards

[benicio otero]

Preferring to think her insistence was rather from mania than reality, Benicio offered up his hands in innocence. “Ok ok,” he relented with a little chuckle, whistling out the side of his mouth at her warning. It shouldn’t surprise either of them since his downfall was primarily his stubborn, often stupid optimism. But he did not want to make room for the option that his album, after all these years, would be anything other than a success—since it was a personal one. “I have been warned,” he echoed grimly, features slackening to offer her the seriousness Stassi needed. Fortunately they didn’t have to dwell on his reading, Benicio’s shuffling of the too-large cards slowing once he heard her question. “For my first time? Ay cabrón…” he grumbled, fanning them out on the table for her to pick from. Naturally she wants to document it, Beni rolling his eyes as her focus fell back to her phone. “Noo I’m shy,” he feigned in protest to the idea, not wanting any more evidence of her state to be published on the internet. But he knew her sensitivity about it, instead reaching playfully for the device from her hand, aiming it as if he were about to take a selfie of them. “Your battery is so low,” he commented, moving it away and out of reach. “Here, let me charge.” Fewer distractions and less room for public exposure, returning to the cards. “Come on, pick.”

[stassi siminski]

She nods, the spirits appeased by his acquiescing. She takes another slurp of the soda, relishing the relief against the sandpaper of her throat. "The deck does the work for you," she insists, watching her precious cards be shuffled between his hands, feeling the power radiating off of them. She was in the habit of collecting video clips all the time, but especially when she was around a man, needing a huge amount of b roll to utilise in her dating videos as she patch worked together a mostly fictionalised account of her love life. This had become even more of a production since she had started dating Pat, though the phone slips from her fingers with ease, disappearing somewhere behind Beni and out of reach. Her lips pout but she does as she's told, running a finger across the edge of the cards that were now proffered in her direction, pausing only when it felt right. She selects three that are right beside each other, tapping each one as she spoke, "this one for past, this one for present, that one for future, por favor."

[benicio otero]

If he could have been prepared for this moment by anything, it was memories of his abuela watching Walter Mercado on daytime television. A flamboyant, theatrical man who told of fortune and future, commanding an audience of women curious about their children’s careers or husband’s faithfulness. Benicio hummed with a silly, borrowed sense of power as he shuffled the cards, mimicking Stassi although it was with reverence rather than deceit. He could see the intrigue of this practice, not a game but perhaps a tool, an aid. He could also see how it may be misguided or exploited. “Hmm ok, for your past,” he starts, following her lead, flipping over the first card: the ace of cups. “What is this, a cup? A goblet?” he guesses, studying the illustration, rendered upside for her. “Ah, I see. In the past you couldn’t share what was in it with anyone else because you only had one cup. And if you poured out of it then you did not have anymore for yourself,” he continued confidently, making up the interpretation as he went. “Am I close?” he whispered cheekily.

[stassi siminski]

A cup with gold liquid spilling over greets her, bringing a smile to her face. Not so bad. "Abundance, creativity, you aren't too far off," she says, pleased. If she were her normal self she'd be able to remember that it was also connected to new friendships, that if anything, it was a fitting card for her to pull from Beni's hand. A card she would typically associate with him. She's waving him along to the next card when there's a knock at the front door, followed by an immediate and distinctive sound of a key turning in the lock, which meant it could only realistically be one person. Sure enough, the familiar figure of her sister is soon in the room, her eyes immediately sweeping over the landmines around them but her face fixed in such a way as to hide the horror she too felt at the scene. "Stassi I've been calling nonstop," she says, shooting for casual though her tone was edged with obvious concern. "Hello Ben." She looked at the cards between them, the food in Stassi's lap. "Thank you," she says subtly to him, forcing a smile to her face. "Aren't you cold, Stas? Let's find you a sweater." Stassi rolls her eyes at her fussing, oblivious to the crisis response that was unfolding around her. "Sorry, she's a year older than me so she gets like this," she says to Benicio, waving her sister off and tapping the next card.

[benicio otero]

Perhaps as pleased with himself as Stassi was, Benicio leaned into his new role as a tarot reader. Of course if he could take clues from the illustrations and adapt meanings to what he knew about her, he supposed it could be entirely a sham when done by the untrained or nonbelieving. But his efforts were genuine, hoping he would not turn over a card like his own that warned of calamity and destruction—it would be a struggle to spin that in her current condition. They are interrupted by the sound of the door unlocking and her sister tumbling in, Benicio sitting up to attention. “Maya, hola,” he returned to the blonde, a face he did not encounter often, the girl often only in pictures or Stassi’s recollections. “Sorry, I took her phone to charge it,” he excused at her mention, any hopes of communicating with her only viable through Patrick. “We are ok, just hanging out,” he announced, gesturing toward the end of the table featuring food and sleep aid. “Be nice to your sister,” he chided half-heartedly toward Stassi, returned to their game by the tap on the card. “The present,” he announced, fingers on the card, teasing the reveal. “I hope you get more cups,” he prefaced, turning it to reveal the hanged man. “Interesante,” he reacted to the image—upside down to him, a man instead standing up. His lips twisted in thought before deciding his interpretation. “Well, he is not upset about this...” he noticed despite the figure’s precarious position. “You might feel stuck but actually it is a way for you to see things differently, to think instead of struggle. This is good, no?”

[stassi siminski]

On another day, it would have pleased Stassi to no end to bring her best friend and her sister into the same room, relishing in having as many of her loved ones near to her as possible. She was a girl of extremes (obviously), either wanting to be alone or in a big raucous group, thrilled when she connected people and found they liked each other as much as she liked them. Maya starts looking for a sweater, surreptitiously blowing out the candles on top of the dresser as she rooted through its drawers, putting things with a tag on to one side so she could try to return them later. It's something Stassi will come to be grateful for down the line, her account so deep in the red that it would prompt accusations of negligence on the part of her credit card provider. "Hmm," Stassi says, considering the card and then squealing with pleasure as she listens to his description, something clicking into place. "Yes! Yes that's it. Are you sure you haven't done this before?" She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, as though what she was saying was not fit for Maya's ears, "you have The Gift too."

[benicio otero]

Hopefully Maya’s presence anchored Stassi to the present rather than making her want to flee. In Beno’s reasoning for keeping her here and occupied (and eventually sedated), Stassi was going to crash—hard. It was an inevitability given her lack of sleep and medication, a fall they could only try to cushion as she came down. It would be easier to help her get rest here than trying to find her out in the clubs or carry her back from a stranger’s apartment. Her impulsivity had already tested its restraints, all under the noses of the soon-to-be three people gathering to shepherd her through her episode. He thinks he hears Maya gasp from the bedroom, curious what she could have found to illicit such a reaction—in prior experiences he had known Stassi to spend money, change her looks, start fights, begin or end relationships. Hopefully she had already done the worst of the damage trashing her apartment and neglecting her body. “I am so good at this,” he reveled, face splitting with a grin. “But I won’t charge you this time, don’t worry.” Confronted with the last card, her future, Benicio flattened his hand to hover above it, eyes shut, humming a prediction into it. “Why do you need so many swords?” he wondered out loud when the six of swords showed itself, craning his neck to look at it from Stassi’s upright position. “Hmm you are taking your boat, maybe somewhere new. But you cannot row it with swords… Maybe they are gifts for your friends where you are going? Or maybe you will not need so many weapons where you are going so you will have to leave them behind when you arrive.”

[stassi siminski]

It wouldn't be until Pat arrived that Stassi's suspicions would be stirred. Until then, she enjoyed the presence of two of her nearest and dearest, too lost to herself to care that they were having to navigate an apartment that looked as though it had just been burgled. In fact she forgot that Maya was even there until she re-emerged, checking on them, glancing at the sleep aid to Stassi's side. Come to think of it, exhaustion had started its slow descent. "You can never have enough swords." She looks at it, a frisson of sadness passing over her though it finds nowhere to land, impossible to take hold. "You've lost your touch. It means I have to let go." Of sanity, perhaps? That ship had certainly sailed. She considers this for a moment, before nodding, looking at the three cards side by side as she considered them as a unified story. Abundance, a new perspective, a need to let go. It seems clear as day to her and she nods again, finally looking up at him. "I have to break up with Patrick," she says matter of factly, tone neutral as she holds her hand out. "Can I have my phone?"

[benicio otero]

If it was possible for her to possess even more swords, Stassi probably would in order to keep everyone else at bay. Vaguely he wonders how many swords it is possible to have in all of tarot, but her reading is up and she likely gleaned an entirely different story from his own interpretation. In fact, it’s no surprise when she enlightens him about the meaning, causing Benicio to roll his eyes. “So dramatic,” he chuckled, swiping the card away so she could sooner forget it, back into the deck and set to the side. “I like mine better.” Breaking up with Pat was not the type of decision she should be making in her current state, something much harder to come back from than a questionable purchase or an unsettling Instagram post. “I think it is talking about your closet,” he recommended instead, playing it cool. He reached over to her phone on its charger, fingertips guessing enough bad passcodes that the screen was disabled when he passed it to her. “Oops,” he said innocently, moving to toss a blanket onto her lap as Maya continued somewhere off in the background. “Finish this food with me? See, I even got your magic burger.”

[stassi siminski]

"Phone," she repeats, for once not so easily dissuaded from what she's decided is a mandate from god. No matter that she didn't believe in god. Finally her property is returned to her, but when she casts her eyes down at the cracked screen she can see that she's locked out, something that makes her sigh heavily. She shakes her head at the food, a sense of uneasiness creeping over her now that she didn't have the tarot to focus on. It occurs to her that it's weird that both Maya and Benicio are here, and Maya's body language is suggesting something is off. She's dressed for the office and Stassi finally notices the time, 3pm, not at all a time her sister was usually available for visits. She looks at Beni, realization dawning on her, tearing through her, making her feel wounded and trapped. The blanket is thrown to the floor as she gets up, pacing a little before she stops somewhere between the two of them, within earshot of them both. "I want you guys to leave. Like right now."

[benicio otero]

There was no telling if this was the calm before the storm or if it had already passed, though Benicio had to doubt the latter considering her dashed hopes of going out tonight. That excess energy had to be stored somewhere, a tightly wound rubber band waiting to snap. His bids for her attention had redirected her toward food and a standstill, momentarily away from her dysfunction, but it was a careful teetering game to be played. And tipping out of his favor, it seemed, as something appeared to suddenly shift within her being. Beni clocked the change of her features, the blanket flung away, her body language rattled. It could have been any ballooning thought of hers that carried her away, hard to tell seeing as Maya had been mostly working out of sight of them and their game had taken her focus away from the apartment quietly changing behind her. Raking a hand through his curls, Beni’s gaze hitched on Maya’s like they could telepathically agree to stall her. “Stassiii,” he sang from the couch, chin jutted out from the folded arms he rested on. “Come sit, talk to me. I will leave when Pat gets here.”

[stassi siminski]

Alarm bells are ringing in her head. The mania is in self-preservation mode, working to convince her that they were not on her side, that they were obstacles to the productivity and creative flow she had been in until they arrived. She instinctively takes a step further back from them both as her sister emerges, a holdall in her manicured hand, one that had been quietly filled with things she might need if she were going away. But where would she go? She knows the answer and one look at Maya's face confirms it, despite how much she's trying to hide it. Always a terrible actress. "No," she says, shaking her head. "I know what you're thinking but you're wrong." She looks to Benicio, as though he might be able to convince her. "Can you tell her I'm fine? I ate, I drank... I'll sleep, I just need quiet. Both of you go so I can rest." The mention of Pat sets her on edge, frustration both at the situation and his absence making her irritable. "Patrick's not coming so just go, I'm fine, really."

[benicio otero]

If he feels any frustration, it is only that his friend fights him every step of the way of needing him. It is hard to ignore her pleas, knowing that this heightened version of her right now could also make very serious decisions for all of her life, unable to consider the other versions. The most balanced Stassi that he was used to had told him how to handle her during these types of episodes, that he could not simply indulge her or let her carry on. It was difficult to reconcile, like he was treating her as an invalid or asserting his will on her, but in the shared worry of Maya’s eyes he knows they cannot stop here. It wasn’t guaranteed to get any better with Pat’s arrival, either. Letting go of a frazzled sigh, Beni moved to sit on the couch’s arm, careful of spooking her. Like she might bolt if they moved too quickly, even more certain she would be gone if they left her alone. “You are fine,” he echoed, tone steadied to preserve the peace. He couldn’t risk checking his phone for updates of Pat's whereabouts. “Let’s go lay down for a few minutes,” he offers, nodding toward her bedroom though he feared what may be in there.

[pat bohannon]

It felt insane to sit on his hands for this long. To tap his phone every few seconds as if he'd miss something the second it went black, drifting from conversations with Maya and Benicio and hating that he was the odd man out in all this. Relying on advice, on histories and admissions he'd rather unlearn, angry and upset and worst of all, helpless. In his ability to control anything, to be there for her until they said he could. Emotions dangerously misplaced until he's finally given the OK, sorting himself back down as he walked the familiar route to his bar. Grounding himself in the minutes, in the advice he'd been given. That she might say things she won't mean, that it will be a surprise...endless dialogue that he can't properly calibrate until he hears her shouting through the door. Hears the wild threat of his name on her tongue, finding the door open as he slid through. They'd talked about keys, before. An idle thought to keep him preoccupied, expression neutral but eyes flicking around the destruction of her apartment. He was used to the chaos but this was different, looking to her friend, then Maya, before gently clearing his throat. "I'm right here, Stas."

[stassi siminski]

It's a good thing Benicio is there, with Maya struggling to dance this same old dance. Her own fear is barely hidden behind her fixed expression, her frustration evident in her rigid stance, evidently exhausted by this routine. Stassi on the other hand is at least very slightly placated by Beni's agreement, easing just a little though she doesn't move from where she's stood. A million thoughts race through her head, a desire to push them away, and maybe even to pull herself out of this. That trickle of recognition still there, a whisper that Maya was right and she ought to listen. It's quietened by the turn of the door, Pat's presence immediately altering the energy in the room. She had manifested him there, how else could he have known? "Baby!" In seconds her arms are wrapped around his waist, holding tight as her face presses into his firm chest. Hard to believe she had been set on breaking up with him just moments before. Without letting go she looks up at him pleadingly. "Can you make them go? They won't listen to me."