“Faye, if you got eaten by another shark, would you please at least have the decency to say so? My time is kind of limited, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

“Well, Faye, dear, I’m sure Harlow’s sorry she didn’t think to ask if you’d been eaten by a shark. That’s totally on her.”

“Who are you? Rabbit and Souris call you ‘Alice,’ me and Dee call you ‘Faye.’ I just didn’t know if ‘Alice’ was your poker-playing, Southern Hemisphere name or what. Hey, I’m just trying to fit in here. If I should be introducing myself as ‘Clark,’ I want to know about it sooner rather than later so I don’t embarrass myself.”

“You keep right on building that fence, Faye. See what good it does you.”

“You can donate marrow for her, Alice Faye, you can’t cure her. You can win a poker tournament, but that won’t make her want to live. So I’ll ask you again: Who are you, and what are you doing here? Because Munny sure doesn’t want you to be her, and she wants someone to be out in the world living since she’s got the market cornered on dying right now.”

“Well, you played me, Rabbit. You played me, and it worked, and I’m not the kind of person to make the same mistake twice. Your whole life is a game, but you know what? I already have a life. Poker’s nothing to me but a goddamn deck of cards.”

“You know what they say, Queenie: ALWAYS bet like you have a pair.”