Flip

“So, Eddy, where did you get that thing, anyway?”

Edmund rolled a shoulder in a half-shrug.  He glanced only briefly at the weighty gold coin in his palm before pocketing it. 

“I’ve always had it, man.  I don’t know where it came from.”

“Uh huh.”  Otto was dubious.

“Seriously.”

Edmund leveled a hard look at his best friend and the younger man let it drop with a placating gesture.  It was enough to lower his hackles but not quite enough to satisfy; his lips pressed into a flat line and he pressed on, forcing his friend to jog to keep up with him.

It was a Friday tradition to hit the casino before heading home.  Edmund Chance lived up to his name – he was a lucky bastard whenever he dabbled in gambling and it was that luck that ensured he never had to work a regular job.  This was the first Friday that he’d allowed his friend to see the source of that luck and he regretted it immediately.  The sight of the strange, gold coin spurred question after question and none of the questions were easily answered.

He’d often wondered about it himself, but he rarely thought too deeply about it; it just wasn’t worth the energy to work himself up into a state of anxiety and fear over probabilities he didn’t understand.  All he knew – all he needed to know – was that the coin worked beautifully, each and every time. 

The coin itself was a heavy thing, pure gold as far as he could tell.  One side was engraved with the image of a maiden; the other was adorned with a depiction of treasure.  It was always the treasure side that came up when he flipped it and it was that which he’d given up thinking about.  Calculating the odds of it coming up with treasure again just gave him a disgusting headache and a leaden, dread-soaked weight in his gut.

Eventually it would have to turn lady side up and then what?  He stuffed his hands in his pockets, careful to avoid touching the coin.  They were in front of the casino and he shoved his concern aside.  Otto opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it abruptly.  Edmund slanted a curious look toward his friend, but said nothing.  Instead, he tilted his head, using his chin to gesture his friend onward.

Otto lead the way to the blackjack tables and it was there that they would spend the next couple of hours.  The winning was easy and never enough to really break the house; Edmund had long since mastered the knack of figuring out how to lose from time to time so that the dealer wasn’t wildly suspicious of his luck.  Even if he knew he had a sure hand, he’d still demand a hit or he’d show while knowing the card he needed was at the top of the deck.  He couldn’t explain how he knew what cards were coming up any more than he knew what the dealer had; it was just one of those things that Otto would have had a billion questions about while he, himself, had none.

It just was what it was.