Almost there, Blue replies. What’s the problem?
I stare at the sign again, fighting nausea before furiously texting: Are you fucking kidding me? If I wanted to kill myself, I’d overdose on sleeping pills.
A yellow cab pulls up to the curb and my sister leaps out of it, an exasperated expression on her face.
Since my sextuplet sisters are monozygotic, they look as identical to each other as Holly and I do, which is to say same faces but different hairdos, body fat distributions, and the like. There’s also quite a bit of resemblance between my twin and I and the sextuplets. By the luck of genetic dice, we look more alike than most sisters. Which might explain why Blue also reminds me of Cate Blanchett, only in her role in Heaven, where she sports a buzzcut.
“What’s wrong with this place?” Blue asks.
I point at the sign. “That.”
She sighs. “Yeah. That’s a ‘B.’”
The New York Health Department inspects restaurants and gives them a grade between “A” and “C.” “A” means the place received between zero and thirteen points for sanitary violations, while “B” means fourteen to twenty-seven violations. In real terms, a “B” translates into rats choking on cockroaches, and monkeys from the zoo showing up to throw feces at the customers. A “C” grade means twenty-eight violations or more, so I picture the inside of those restaurants as a post-apocalyptic landscape with plague-infested, mutated rats eating the staff, the customers cannibalizing each other, and food that comes back to zombie-like life.
I narrow my eyes at her. “How would you feel if I dragged you to Chick-fil-a?”
She shudders.
“What about KFC?”
She pales.
“Popeyes. Church’s Chicken. Zax—”
“Enough,” she says. “Let’s find you a restaurant with an ‘A.’”
Yep. Blue’s fear of birds extends to the fried variety.
I pull up my phone. “Give me a moment.”
I don’t trust even ‘A’-graded places, which is why I begged Blue to write an app for me that parses the raw inspection data that the city of New York provides to everyone for free. I give the app my location, and it gives me a nearby restaurant with a zero score.
Aha. A place called Planet of the Crepes.
Promising.
I check to make sure they don’t serve any bird stuff and find that they don’t. They even make the crepes without eggs.
“What do you think?” I show my sister the menu.
She sighs theatrically. “Let’s go.”
A quick cab ride later, we walk into Planet of the Crepes and I look around approvingly. The crepes are made in front of everyone, and the guy who makes them washes the crepe maker between each round and wears new gloves.
This might be the safest lunch I’ve had out in a while.
Blue orders first, choosing a savory crepe with everything.
I inwardly cringe. Whenever I watch the news, I keep an ear out for foods that give people foodborne illnesses, so I can strike them from my diet. And at least a couple of the fillings in Blue’s crepe are on this “never eat” list. I don’t tell her that, though, because she has explicitly forbidden me from doing so.
Which I understand. It was bad enough that I told my siblings Santa doesn’t exist—magicians are skeptics by nature, so I sleuthed out that jolly conspiracy theory very early in life. I also ruined the tooth fairy for them. Speaking of which, what kind of a twisted mind came up with that story? A supernatural flying being interested in teeth? Sorry, the teeth of children, because that makes it so much better. Does she keep them in a nightmarish pile somewhere, or does she eat them? And if it’s the latter, how hard are the tooth fairy’s teeth?
Anyway, I worry that if I ruin ham and other comfort foods for my sisters, they might finally lynch me—as they almost did after Santa-gate.
When it’s my turn to order, I get the sweet crepe with fillings that come straight out of a jar, like Nutella and honey.
“Do you want vanilla sugar?” the guy asks.
I almost shout, “Fuck no!” before managing a more moderate, “No, thanks.”
There’s a type of vanilla flavoring that comes from the anal excretions of beavers. It’s the reason I’m very diligent when it comes to researching vanilla-flavored products before I put them anywhere near my mouth. And why I never drink Swedish schnapps.
When our food is ready, Blue insists on paying for us both. Carrying our crepes, we grab a table in the corner.
I cut into my crepe and look at her expectantly.
“What?” she says, sounding defensive.
“You know.” I fork the bite of crepe into my mouth and resist moaning as the rich, sweet flavor explodes on my tastebuds.
“Know what?”
I put down my fork. “You paid.” I fold one finger. “You wanted to share a meal instead of going for the usual video call.” I fold a second finger. “Either you’re about to share a big secret or you need a favor.”
“Fine.” She stabs her crepe with a fork. “I need your help.”
I can’t help a villainous grin. “With what?”
She slices the crepe in half. “I want to learn how to play—and cheat in—poker.”
Wow. That’s not exactly asking me to teach her how to pick locks or bend spoons, but close.
“That’s a big ask,” I say. “You know how I feel about breaking the magicians’ code.”
She sighs. “I figured you’d say that.”
“I demand to know why.”
She sighs more theatrically. “I figured you’d say that too.” She pulls out her fancy phone, brings up an image, and shows it to me.
I wolf-whistle as I stare at the screen.
The picture looks like a setup for some sort of porn. A rare, made-exclusively-for-women kind of porn.
A group of very attractive men sit around a table in some kind of sauna, wearing only towels and—in the case of one—aviator sunglasses. Sweat is beading on their chiseled faces and their firm muscles are flexing, clearly tense from concentration.
The testosterone levels in that room would kill a horse.
Perhaps the oddest part of the tableau is that they’re holding playing cards. That, combined with the chips on the table and my sister’s desire to learn about poker, suggests to me that’s the game they’re playing.
I wonder what Clarice would think of this image? Could the sight of so many gorgeous men holding playing cards be a gateway out of her card-sexualness?
Maybe. Or it could go the other way. If a woman stares at this image long enough, she might want to buy a deck of cards. It might even be happening to me already. Why else do I so desperately wish to see Tigger naked and holding cards in that room?
My sister pulls the phone back.
I look up. “I’ve heard of hot yoga, but never of Bikram poker.”
She smiles. “It’s funny you say that. That’s known as the Hot Poker Club.”
I chuckle. “The dudes are hot. I’d let any one of them poke me.” This is obviously a lie, but I’ve been keeping up the pretense ever since I made myself sound like a sex goddess to my sisters back in high school. “In fact, the only way this image could be any hotter is if their pokers weren't hidden by those lucky towels.”
She frowns. “One of those pokers is off limits.”
“Got it,” I say. “The first rule of Hot Poker Club is ‘keep your grubby hands off your sister’s boytoy.’”
That also happens to be a family motto of sorts among the eight of us.
Her frown disappears. “And the second rule is—” In unison we say, “Keep your grubby hands off your sister’s boytoy.’”
I grin at her. “Which one?”
She points at the guy in sunglasses.
“Not bad at all,” I say, peering at the premium man candy. He vaguely reminds me of Ryan Reynolds, but with some Slavic features. “So, what’s the plan? You learn to cheat and then beat him in a steamy game of strip poker?”
She rolls her eyes. “Will you help me?”
I bite my lip. “I can, but not in the way you think.”
The frown is back. “Explain.”
I do jazz hands to showcase my gloves. “Card manipulation is difficult when you wear these all the time. To make matters worse, people always want to touch the magician’s cards, so—and I’m ashamed to admit this—I’m not so great at that branch of magic.”
“What?” She looks at me like the Ace of Spades has just appeared on my forehead. “What about those millions of card tricks you’ve made me watch?”
I shrug. “A famous magician once said ‘card tricks are the poetry of magic.’ I obviously know some. We all do, but I’m not an expert—and especially not when it comes to card cheating.”
She narrows her eyes. “You made it sound like you’d help.”
“And I will.” It’s my turn to pull out my phone. “I know someone who might be one of the best in the world at what you need.” I pull up a video of Clarice doing one of her poker cheating demonstrations. “See?”
As my sister watches, her gaze turns calculating.
“Put me in touch with her,” she says when the video is over.
“I’ll need a favor in return,” I say.
She scoffs. “A favor for just putting me in touch with someone?”
“Does a realtor not deserve her fee for connecting a buyer and a seller? Does a travel agent not deserve—”
“You know I could find her on my own if I wanted, right? I’ve seen her face and I know she’s in your inner circle.”
That’s true. My sister works for the government agency that likes to listen to everyone’s cell phone conversations—or as she says, No Such Agency—so she can locate someone with even less data, and probably listen to all their phone calls after that.
“Trust me,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster. “You’ll want me to put in a good word.”
In truth, though, she’d have Clarice as soon as she said the word “poker.”
“Fine.” Blue forks a piece of her crepe into her mouth. “What do you want?”
I give her my most devious grin. “I want you to write me another app.”
Another eyeroll. “I can’t believe you need my help with that. You have the highest IQ in the family. Why don’t you just learn how to code?”
Yeah, that’s another trick I’ve pulled on them. Scientists have been studying my sextuplet sisters since they were born, looking for similarities and differences in all sorts of metrics, and my twin and I have occasionally been included in that research, which has involved IQ tests and such. So I cheated on one of those tests. Well, not cheated exactly—I just studied for the test, while my sisters didn’t. So I scored way higher than I would’ve otherwise. Though everyone thinks these tests measure only aptitude, it’s not true.
“You might not even need coding for this one,” I say placatingly. “I want to mess with people’s autocorrect.”
Her grin makes us look even more alike. “By ‘people,’ you mean creatures with the last name of Hyman.”
“Yep. And my roommates.”
She scratches her chin.
“Can’t you hack into their phones and create some shortcuts?” I ask. “Turn coke into cock, conference into cunnilingus, and so on?”
“Fine,” she says. “It’s a deal. But only because I might enjoy this particular project.”
“Great. I hope that means you’ll help me with one more thing.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Two favors now?”
“This one is trivial for someone with your resources,” I say. “I want to learn all there is to know about a guy.”
Her eyebrows rise. “A guy?”
“Yeah, and no questions about him either.” Tigger is my property, and I’m not ready to share him with anyone yet, verbally or otherwise.
“Fine. Text me his name, and I’ll see what I can dig up on my way back.” She takes a giant bite of her crepe, and I follow her example.
“So,” I say when I swallow. “Are there any women in the Hot Poker Club?”
She shrugs. “Not that I know of.”
“Not allowed? Or are they rare?”
This is a bit of a sensitive topic for me. Magic is a male-dominated field, and I’d felt both lonely and unwelcome until I met my wonderful roommates.
Blue is either very thoughtful or is carefully chewing her food. “I think guys are just more into poker.”
“That sucks. A woman in that steam room is exactly what the suffrage movement was fighting for. Time to break the steam ceiling.”
She lifts her fork like a shot glass. “Hear, hear. I gladly offer myself as tribute.”
It would be more customary to use a virgin—say, me—as tribute, but I don’t mention this. Instead, I steer the conversation into gossiping about the rest of our family.
Eventually, we get to the topic of Octoparents being in town and demanding a get-together.
“I’d bring some guy if I were you,” Blue says sagely. “Even if he’s your gay friend. It’ll make things so much easier. That’s what I hope to do.”
She’s right. My twin took her new boyfriend to her (actually my) lunch and claims it helped greatly, even though she ended up throwing me under the bus in the process.
Whom can I bring?
Waldo?
Would they even believe us as a couple?
I know whom I want to bring… to the get-together with parents and everywhere else, even a gynecologist appointment.
Tigger.
Hmm. Is it too late to tack on a favor as an extra fee for my tutoring services?
Nah. Bringing him is a bad idea. Octomom is not a young woman anymore, and exposure to such undiluted male hotness might just make her poor heart give out.
Blue nods knowingly. “You’re thinking of the guy you asked me to look up?”
“Yep.”
She finishes her food, wipes her hands, and takes her laptop out of her shoulder bag. “What’s his name? I’ll do a quick search for you right now.”
“Anatolio Cezaroff,” I say.
She types that in, and her eyebrows furrow.
Oh, crap. I really hope she’s not about to tell me that she’s hacked him and learned that he has a venereal disease.
Or worse… a wife.