“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.”

“Alice, I am the game, and trust me: you don’t want to play me.”

“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.”

“Are you referring to the day you instructed me to ‘follow the white rabbit,’ plied me with absinthe and brownies, and tried to have your way with me? Didn’t take long for you to lose your romantic streak, did it?”

“You know what Munny said to me, right before we left? She said, ‘Watching someone die is hard work. Go to Australia and watch Faye fall in love with some dude named Rabbit. That should be fun.”

“As you know, the International Poker Tour, by its own admission, knows very little about poker games, one of which ended tragically last week when an IPT-sanctioned tournament aboard a yacht in Australia accidentally used tarot cards instead of playing cards. That’s right, it’s true! Apparently no one noticed until someone laid down a full house and the dealer died.”

“My help—it’s not a light switch you can turn on and off. My help starts right now, and after this point you don’t get to tell me that you don’t want it anymore. Understand? You had a chance to walk away, Alice, and you didn’t take it. Now it’s time to play the game.”