"Why is it,” asked Sister Edwige as she threw a couple of green chips into the pot to call Sister Augustinha’s raise, “that every time we nuns have a little bit of fun, someone out there screams like we were indulging ourselves in some carnal revelry?”
“Sister Edwige!” said Sister Loreto, as she put her hand on her cheek, a sure tell that she had some pretty valuable cards in the hole, like a pair of jacks or an ace-king. “People might think that you – that we actually knew what you were talking about!”
“It’s no crime to know what we’re not supposed to be doing,” said Sister Edwige, who was wondering whether Sister Loreto was going to reraise, or was going to play it dumb, like she held the lowest pair. Some sisters were so transparent, which was why they chose to ply Scrabble or bake muffins during their recreation hour instead of facing the likes of Sister Edwige at Texas Holdem, but with Sister Loreto, even letting on that she had a superior hand when she very possibly did not was part of the game. “Crafty” was the word for her, Edwige decided, something not necessarily malicious but with the possibility of being so.
“So are you going to call or fold?” Sister Augustinha said, annoyed that Edwige apparently didn’t feel threatened enough by her raise, and that Loreto might even move all-in.
“I’ll… just call,” Loreto said, whereupon the remaining sister, Sister Maryska, tossed her cards down, sensing imminent disaster. Acting as the dealer, Maryska drew the turn card – the king of clubs – eliciting a groan of agony from the playacting Loreto.
“Do you think it’s possible they’ll haul us off to prison and then try us for witchcraft, like they did in the old days?” asked Edwige with a chuckle.
“But whatever for?” said Maryska. In a previous life, she had been a nursery school teacher, but had chosen to enter the order when the Virgin Mary appeared to her from a kaimito tree. “Everything we’ve done has been for the greater glory of God, hasn’t it?”
“Check!” said Sister Augustinha.
“Check!” said Sister Edwige.
“Hmmm…. Let’s make a tiny bet, shall we? Say, two hundred? Just to keep things exciting?” Sister Loreto ever so slightly pushed two even stacks of chips into the pot.
“Two hundred!” said Sister Maryska. “Why, that’s more than I can spend in a week on cookies and three-in-one coffee!”
“It’s only play money, Sister Maryska,” said Augustinha dryly. “It’s not like you or anyone here will starve to death if she makes a dumb call – which I’m not doing!” She folded her hand. “This is pretend-poker. We’re pretending that we’re escaped convicts disguised as nuns, that we stole these habits from a convent’s clothesline, and since our funds are running low and our runaway car is out of gas, we have to stake everything on a game of poker at the local bar, against the woman they know as… Madame Stolichnaya, a retired pediatric nurse and reputed mistress of the Master Demon himself, Dom Athanasius.”
A shiver swept the table as Augustinha’s voice descended into a raspy whisper.
“Oooh, that’s exciting!” said Sister Maryska. “Tell us more! What did we do to become prison convicts?”
Before she joined the nunnery, Augustinha had been part of an avant-garde theater group known for its complete lack of inhibitions onstage and offstage, and it was rumored among the novices peeling potatoes in the kitchen that Augustinha had led a blissfully debauched life, complete with boyfriends, banned substances and (dare they say it) aborted babies. That she was now one of the order’s most devout and dedicated sisters – the one who bathed lepers and tended to terminal patients – could not dispel the impression that she knew more about life than one was reasonably entitled to.
“I fold!” said Sister Edwige, finishing the hand and letting Loreto scoop up the pot. “I think Sister Augustinha’s game is more fun. Let’s play that instead!”
“Awww, just when I was winning!” said Sister Loreto, pouting at her suddenly worthless chips.
“Did we rob a bank?” asked Maryska. “Did someone get killed?”
Loreto said, “What do we know about robbing banks? Even if we did get some money, what would we have used it for? We made a vow of poverty…”
“No, no,” said Edwige, “we didn’t make any vows, we’re not sisters, although we later pretend to be so. We’re villains, we like money, we like spending it on cars, houses, perfumes, vacations to Paris…”
“Men? Did we spend on men?” asked Loreto.
“I don’t even know what it means to spend on men,” sighed Maryska. “Does that mean you – you buy them nice things, like watches and shoes and iPhones…”
“Or you can just buy them,” said Augustinha with a shrug.
“Really? For what?” said Maryska.
Edwige laughed. She had three brothers – an airline pilot, a cryptocurrency trader and a police captain – all of whom had been left by their wives and girlfriends for various reasons. “So you can keep them as pets, snuggle up to them on rainy days, smell their body hair…”
“Ewww, I don’t even want to think about, please, please, take that thought away!” said Loreto, shaking her hands in the air. “No wonder we got caught! We had all of these impure thoughts! We robbed a bank so we could get and do all of these nasty things!”
“Technically, the bank robbery alone was enough to land us in jail. The motive doesn’t matter. We could’ve robbed a bank to give its money away to the poor. We’d still be criminals in the eyes of the law,” said Augustinha.
“It must be fun to be bad – sometimes,” said Sister Maryska, looking out into the garden, where other sisters were watering the begonias and watching the clouds turn pink.
“Do people even know what bad means anymore?” said Sister Edwige. “Or good, for that matter?”
Sister Loreto shuffled the deck of cards and said, “Let’s play another hand! And somebody close that window – I can feel a chill coming.”
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