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The magazine pages flapped as they toppled, revealing the Queen. A leek or leaf of lettuce or frond of palm fanned open in her hand.
The drink the woman handed Isis had a green frond too. Its stalk not quite parallel to the bright red straw emerging from the yellow-orange cocktail. Pineapple something.
The woman winked. Her curly black hair bounced.
“You know he’s in there alone, right?” she’d asked a few hours earlier, across the sterile white waiting room. No proper introductions. She’d waited for Isis’s attention before continuing. “I left his office a half hour ago, and nobody else has gone in there since. So he’s making you wait for nothing.” Chewing gum snapped against her teeth. “Probably in there popping pills.”
The receptionist, Satou, had scolded the woman’s rudeness. But it was nothing Isis hadn’t suspected, or hadn’t on some level let herself be influenced by. Pity long since mingled with and indivisible from irritation, shards of it already hardened into resentment.
The woman proved quite chatty. “Let me guess – media rights contract?” she’d said, as Isis thumbed a folder in her briefcase.
“Real estate sale,” Isis corrected. She could have let it sit there, but something prompted her to nod at the woman’s purse and say. “Pack of melon gum?”
The woman had smirked, popped her gum again, reached for the clasp to unzip her purse. She’d flashed the pack of gum, green cartoon melon over the label. “Too easy,” she’d said. “Pair of gloves, white ones?”
They’d played that game to its conclusion. Isis won a lot of easy rounds, but felt she’d lost the war when the woman correctly picked out her Egyptian passport, but Isis had guessed American instead of Canadian. And even though Isis thought it odd when the woman asked if she’d brought a bag of marbles or other game pieces, Isis hadn’t taken it as reason to think the woman had anything like the carved set of wooden Raijinhai figures that was in her briefcase.
Isis still hadn’t been called into the office proper, and they sat on the carpeted floor and set up a makeshift playing space over the glass coffee table – built a stage and screen out of finance magazines.
“I take it you do not like Seto much?” Isis had asked, after several rude comments from the Canadian woman on the subject.
“Nope! I actually cut ties with him once before.” The woman’s chirp had turned sharply into a dramatised sigh. “But you know how it is. You just don’t get far in business unless you suck up to the right people. So I came crawling back. I play nice. He gets to sell products with my face on them. I don’t get blacklisted throughout the industry.”
Isis did know how that was. She’d told Seto to stay out of Tombkeeper business, and he hadn’t, and now they both had to live with his decisions and mental breakdowns.
They’d torn down the screen of finance magazines to reveal two Kings, one on each of their sides of the Raijinhai field. It had been their second game, and the second time their game had ended in a draw.
“You have a remarkably good face for Raijinhai,” the woman had smiled, as they reset the pieces for a third game.
Isis had still been blushing from the flattery when the screen opened to reveal the leaf/leek/frond on the other side. Queen takes King.
Isis had told Satou to reschedule her appointment with Kaiba Seto, and followed the woman out the waiting room and out the building and into a bar. Isis was about to follow the rest of the way onto the dance floor, and downed half her cocktail in one swig.
Brain freeze. Sticky. Eager.
“You really don’t recognise me?” the woman said, when Isis reached for her waist. It was early enough and the music was quiet enough and they were close enough that the words of their conversation still made it across.
Isis did not recognise the woman, but she could guess. “Model?”
The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Dancer.” Something about the way she said it gave Isis the impression it was an addition rather than a correction. “Clairvoyant?” she shot back.
“Businesswoman.” Isis was not sure if this was an addition or correction. “And archaeologist,” she added, because she thought it sounded more exciting.
“Aileen Rao,” Aileen finally said. She swung her hips up so Isis’s hands slid down to meet them. “Back in the 2000s, when I was starting out, they marketed me towards girls my own age and slightly younger… You never caught the broadcasts? You don’t have any younger sisters?”
Isis thought of the motorcycle on the blocky tube television that Marik had caught sight of in the marketplace. “One younger brother,” she said, hesitated a moment, “and one older.”
“Mmm, that must be why then,” Aileen said flippantly. She ran an arm down from Isis’s back, over her behind, back of her thigh.
Isis decided she liked this dance. Tête-à-tête. Who knew you could be so neatly matched, and have so much fun, playing against someone who made so many wrong guesses? “Only child?” she asked.
“Oh, you darling,” Aileen snorted a laugh, “I wish~ You’re not even close.”
