One dice showed seven dots, and the other had a blank side on top.
Baffled, I took the next opening to join in the game, making safe bets with the few chips I still had. I was shocked once again when I looked back to the dice, which were now a six and a one as the stickman slid them back to the three unused dice. The shooter of that roll was passable for a casino regular, but I caught a few details that subtly marked her as not entirely used to her wealth. A few stray hairs extending away from what would other was have been a uniform waterfall of black, the slight wrinkling in a pantsuit that should have gone to the dry cleaners yesterday, fingernails that were a day or two overdue for a manicure. Overall she rocked a sharp look, assuming you didn't look too closely.
She seemed to notice my interest in her, and quickly shot me a knowing smirk. When the dice came back around to her, she picked a pair without looking and tossed them with the lax attitude of someone who didn't give in to small rituals of good luck. The same strange movement reoccurred, but I couldn't quite put it into words. The first die came to a stop with eight dots on its upward side, and the second die . . .
There was something in the center, where the dot would go on the one face. But the actual one face was on the side facing towards me, and the emptiness in the center of the top face seemed to refuse my direct gaze. I stopped fighting with whatever reflex kept my eyes from looking at that, and noticed the other gamblers. There was a twitch or two in their eyes, but nothing they seemed to notice. They went on as if the total was a seven, and as soon as those dice moved they seemed to lose those impossible sides. This mistress of impossible odds must have noticed that I saw what nobody else would acknowledge, and beckoned me to the bar when the round ended.
We sat towards the further end, so the bartender wouldn't hear as easily while he mixed our orders. "How did you do that?" I said in a whisper, with a touch of urgency and fear I didn't intend. Despite not knowing what was in the center of a die face that apparently represented negative one, that void in a plane of white was fixed in my mind's eye.
She smiled, apparently amused by my reaction. Not at all afraid that she could get thrown out, or worse, if what I saw reached the casino management. "Do what? Roll sevens for those two rounds? Luck, obviously." She replied with a playful voice. The look in her eye told me she knew exactly what I was talking about.
"You know, rolling . . . other sides that aren't supposed to be there, and people still did the math without acting as if anything was wrong with that." I had to suppress my nervousness as the bartender brought our drinks. Mine was my go-to drink, a traditional whiskey sour, but this stranger's drink was something a cloudy black with a garnish of a grapefruit slice and a lavender sprig. I still regret not catching the name of that cocktail.
She delayed the answer, taking a sip while she seemed to savor my building intrigue as much as the drink. "Just luck." She said with an innocent shrug.
"Bullshit, luck doesn't do that for other people."
"Other people don't share my specialization in botany." She smiled as she reached into a pocket of her suit jacket, producing a vial containing a clover with seven leaves. "It's fairly simple once you know how to grow them."
I stared, confused. Four-leaf clovers were considered lucky by tradition, but that didn't mean anything, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for a mutation of the plant to produce seven leaves. That shouldn't be enough to alter her luck, let alone twist dice rolls into impossible pairings. "What?"
Then she produced another vial. Inside was a clover stem with no leaves to count. But then I caught the flicker. Something transparent that was shaped like a clover leaf was attached to the stem, but like with the negative pip on the die I couldn't force my eyes to focus on it. "The other part is understanding how to redistribute luck. Concentrate it into one clover, and another has to hold the debt of luck that generates. The results are pretty normal with five or six leaves, but the interesting results happen when burden clover has to grow a negative leaf. I'm guessing reality wasn't quite built to handle that much of a difference in fortune."
"Most people can't see the physical manifestation of excessive luck debt, and their brains won't let them acknowledge the result. You're the first natural I've encountered. It took me a week to train myself to look directly at the distortion." She leaned in unnervingly close. "I keep the work secret, of course. The pair intensify their effect when separated by more than a couple of feet, and that could lead to dangerous results in places that can't soak up that shift of luck. Here, I slip the burden clover into someone's pocket and the worst that happens is that they strike out for the night, and I can continue to fund my research entirely with my own winnings."
I took a moment to process the ethical implications of this, since the rest was well beyond my understanding. "But . . . why are you telling me this?"
She leaned back, shrugged and smiled playfully. "I think you're cute. And I make sure the research is well-protected enough that any investigation will prove it to be as nonsensical as most think it is." Popping the lid off of the 'burden' clover's vial, she flicked it in a way so it landed in a passing man's pocket without him noticing, presumably a result of her luck, though now I was much more vulnerable to doubting everything. She removed the seven-leaf clover from the other vial and placed it in my breast pocket. "Consider your fortune for the rest of this night to be my treat." With a wink, she downed the rest of her drink and walked away, leaving me stunned and gaping.
I'd like to meet her again, but after seeing my results for the rest of my gambling for that evening I can only assume it will only happen if she's the one that considers it lucky to do so.
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