>> fiction >> nsync >> black threes >>
This is just a small note on this story. In it, I use the game canasta, but there are many ways to play this game, and this is just the way that I've been taught to play it. Oh, and for all those people that think it's nothing but an old lady game, you should see it at my house. WWF style, flying chairs and all.
"Take that, loser. I swear, playing with you is too predictable," the man said, laughing as he leaned back. His hand shot out for the can of soda in front of him. "It's pretty sad when we're stuck playing a card game on a tour bus. Oh, I'm sorry, Justin, didn't you have two jacks? Poor you."
Justin smirked, and leaned forward, taking two cards off of the stack. Four decks had been shuffled and sat there, gleaming in the overhead lights of the tour bus. "Very funny, Chris. Incredibly. You know that I didn't have any jacks." He grinned suddenly, and threw a black three atop of the growing pile of cards that looked at them, face up. The four men sat around the small table, while the fifth was in the back, sleeping away the ride.
"Man, why do you always block me? Oh, this is great. I'm complaining about a canasta game," Lance said with a frown, taking two cards for himself. His hands moved quickly as he put a joker on the line of cards in front of him and counted quickly. It was seven. He pushed them together and made them into a neat little pile, placing them above a red three. "There. Now all we need is a black canasta and we're going out on all your asses."
A new card was added to the pile, and he sat back, watching JC's expression. "You know how you were complaining about the game? You were the one that taught us the damned game. I didn't even think that it would be this addictive." They all laughed as he eyed the pile one more time. Both Lance and Chris groaned when he picked it up, adding two matching cards to the one at the top of the pile. He passed them over to Justin and chuckled as he added the new cards to his hand. "Do you guys think that you're really going to beat us? You never do."
"Remember, there's a first time for everything," Chris warned, taking two cards from the only pile still sitting there. He didn't look at them, even though he knew that a black three was going to be sent his way. A black three meant that thhe pile was frozen, and you couldn't pick it up. JC only smirked as he put down his black three. Chris looked at the two cards in his hand and sighed. "Damn it, just one wild card. Just a joker or a two, that's all I'm asking for," he mumbled, shifting around his cards. "Here, I'll finish off the tens. We're only...what, three thousand, four thousand down from you? You can make that up in one round."
Justin frowned and looked over his cards while Chris discarded. "Yeah, that's true. With the hand I've got, it's even more clear. I've got all apples and oranges, no pairs. Get it?" he asked, while everyone else groaned. A noise came from the back of the bus and Joey walked out, looking at the table.
"Not again," he groaned, sitting on the seat beside Chris. "You guys are far too addicted to this game."
Lance smiled, moving around his cards a little to see what he could do on his turn. "Yeah, this coming from the guy who was incredibly addicted to Uno just a little while ago. Talk about a stupid game."
Shaking his head, JC tapped his fingers on the table. "It's the same damned game. Stop talking and start playing," he commanded. "I actually have a good hand for...never mind," he said, watching in dismay as Lance went out, throwing away his extra card. Sighing, the other three started to count up the points in their hand. They were removed from the points already accumilated. Lance and Justin started to count up the remaining points, relating the scores to Chris.
The entire bus filled with silence as the pen scratched on the paper. After a little while, and figuring out the new scores, he looked up with a sigh. "One more hand and we should be finished. We have over twenty one thousand," he broke off when Lance groaned, "and you have nineteen thousand. We have to meld one hundred and fifty. You're lucky; you only have to meld one twenty. This is going to be a long hand."
Joey nodded his head as the cards were put into four piles and shuffled. "And how long until we're at the next venue?" he asked, looking towards the clock.
"Another four hours," JC commented, his blue eyes also making it to the clock. Everyone sighed this time, as the cards were put together, and Lance delt out fifteen to each person. They picked up their cards and started to examine and shift them, throwing their red threes to their partner that was holding the cards on the table in front of them.
"I'm in for the next game, then." When they had picked cards off of the stack to make sure that all of them had fifteen again, before one was turned face up, Joey leaned over and looked over their hands with a sigh. "Did you guys ever notice that cards symbolize certain things in life?"
Four blank stares met him. "Uh...Joe? Are you sure that we don't need to stop to find you some medication or something? You're a little...what's the word I'm looking for...aw, hell, your cheese has slipped off your cracker. You're a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Not the tallest tree in the forest. Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Few bricks short of a full load. Not playing with a full deck. That was a good one," Justin said with an arrogant grin.
He just shook his head. "No, it wasn't. Seriously, though, think about it for a second. Put down your cards, you can deal out another hand when I'm done," he commanded. It wasn't very often that Joey wanted to share life revelations with them, so the hands went down instantly. He picked up the closest one to him and shuffled through it for a moment. "Okay, start with this one."
An ace of diamonds dropped on the table in front of him. "Okay, it's an ace, so?" JC asked, reaching his arm over his head before he scratched his scalp lightly. "I don't follow you."
"An ace is the highest scoring card in the game, other than the wild cards. What you want is a canasta of aces, because they're worth so much, right?" Instead of blank looks, the four heads nodded. "Basically, the ace symbolizes your goals. Something that is common, but isn't discovered as often as you would think."
"You forgot, we're playing with four decks, Joe. That means that there's...sixteen aces in the deck. That's a hell of a lot of aces in one game."
His head shook. "No, see, you don't get it. Yes, there's a lot of aces in the deck, but there's a lot of cards as well. Take sixteen cards out of the two hundred and eight cards or so in front of you. Say that I put all of the cards into one stack and shuffled them a few times. Do you think that you could pull an ace the first chance that you get?"
Chris cocked his head to the side. "Probably not. It's not that slim of a chance, but it's still slim."
A smile appeared on his friend's face. "There you go. That's what I'm trying to tell you. You have to dig for the aces, you're waiting in anticipation to see one, right? It's just like your goals in life. They don't come out of thin air all that much. You have to work for them, and you're anticipating the moment that your goals have been reached, right?"
"Basically, what you're saying is that, if you take how we came together, we were just five lucky people that managed to snag the ace for the first card, right?" Justin was less confused than before, but he still wsn't following everything his friend was saying exactly. It was still a little muddled, but damn it, he was going to figure it out. It might take him awhile, but he was going to figure it out.
"Exactly. How often do you think you can pull the ace off the top, though? Then, you have this card," he said, throwing down a three of clubs ontop of the ace. "The card that everyone seems to hate when its thrown in their direction, but if they're holding them, they're happy. So, Justin, do you think you can figure this one out?"
There was a slight pause before he began to talk. "Well, a three blocks you. You can't pick up the pile when there's a black three ontop of it. You haven't established what the pile is, though," he added, pointing to the card that was sitting beside the glossy backs of the stack. It was the king of hearts.
Lance started to laugh. "Funny that that card would be there, and you would be the one to point at it, J. You ARE the king of hearts. At least, for teenagers."
Another smile lit Joey's face. His eyes started to sparkle when his friends started to catch on to what he was trying to say. "Just another card that symbolizes another thing in life, or another person. Justin IS the king of teenager's hearts. You're the one that most of them lust over. It has to do with the curls, I think." Justin reached up and patted his hair proudly. "Okay, the pile that you can pick up? That's everything in life that's given to you. Everything that someone just thinks 'hey, this person is pretty cool' and they give you something that maybe you didn't need, but maybe you did. It's the freebies. Almost like a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card."
"Okay...if that's the free stuff in life, you must be talking about the stuff that comes easily, right?" Joey nodded at his words. "That would mean that when a black three is thrown down, it's like waving a piece of cheese in front of a mouse but not letting him have it. The next person knows what's in the pile, and he may want what's in there, but you stop him from having it. What does that mean?"
Joey didn't answer. He wanted to see if someone else had picked up on what Justin said, and soon enough, the words sunk in deep enough to where someone could answer. "Basically, you're squashing their hopes. You're telling them that you could have had it, but you have enough at the time, but I'm not going to let you have it, right? It's like when you were a kid, and someone had a new toy, but wouldn't let you play with it. They made you sit there and watch while they played with it, and you knew that you would never be able to have one of them," JC said slowly, getting faster towards the end.
"But what about the people that are holding the black threes, then?" Lance asked, a wondering tone in his voice. "What about those people?"
His brown eyes slid down to his lap, staring at the material of his jeans for a moment before Joey looked back at him friend. "Those are the people that get pure joy out of doing what JC just said. Those are the people that like to sit there and watch you hurt or watch you suffer, or try to stop you. Gee, who do we know that's like that?" No one even dared to say the name. His hands moved again in the cards and he pulled out a four of spades, putting it neatly atop of the three. "This card is only worth five points, and it's one that's thrown out a lot. It symbolizes the small things in life that people take for granted. These are the things that most people don't really notice. Maybe how the smell of apple pie reminds you of home. Maybe how seeing the sky blue like this can make your day a little better. The small things that you don't realize you have until you don't have them. Yet, they seem so small that you keep throwing them out."
Lance's eyes widened. "But they still amount to something, especially when you add them up. A whole canasta of them equals thirty five. Alone, it's only worth five. So, when the cards are added up...you start to notice how much it actually helps you."
"That's what I've been trying to tell you the whole time." With a laugh, he closed the hand that he was holding and reached for another one. "Okay, what about a two?"
"The wild card," JC told him. "The real 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card. It can mean so much, and help so much, but yet it does nothing, because it's not worth all that much. It's only twenty points, like the ace."
Justin groaned. "Even twenty points makes a difference, Jace. Twenty points can win you the game in reality. You never really know what it's for."
The cards that Joey was holding when back down. "Yeah, but what he's trying to say," the eldest started to say, "is that it's the same point value of an ace. It's worth the same, but it does something different. No one's really sure what a two is for, though. It's one of the wild cards. You can have a whole canasta of them, which is worth five hundred point. You can add one to another group, and make a black canasta. Then, it's only worth three hundred points. Still a lot, but not the same. Of course, you can also clean out your hand with them, by putting down one with a pair. So, really, the deuces are nothing and everything at the same time."
A slow clapping sounded beside him. "You've figured it out. Now, before we were saying that the king of hearts is basically Justin, right? What about everyone else at this table." Joey flipped over the two hands, and fanned them out, looking for the right card. "There's JC, right there." A jack of diamonds was put in front of him.
"How is a jack of diamonds me?"
"A jack is basically a prince, right? Not exactly a king, but sometimes better. In this case, it's your talent that makes you better than the king. You're the voice, you're the producer, you're the real writer. You ARE the jack. You ARE the prince. You're always there, whether people want you to be there or not, and you're always helpful." Joey stopped talking long enough to pick up another card and throw it at Chris. "You're the wild card."
He stared down at the joker. "I think I take offence to this," he said.
Joey shook his head quickly. "You don't understand what I'm saying. You're the joker, because you are the comedian, whether you want to be or not. You make mistakes, and you're able to laugh at them. Isn't that what the court jester does, which in turn, isn't that what a joker is? One and the same. We had this discussion a couple night ago. The court jester and the joker are the exact same thing. Not only that, but the joker card is worth fifty points, the most in a game. That doesn't mean that you're the most desired, mind you, but it does mean that you're the top of the point range. In real life, you're the top when it comes to age, experience...life in general. You're the one that we turn to when we need advice, because you're older and wiser than us. You're the one that everyone wants to be around, because you can make a bad day seem not so bad, or a good day seem even better. Sometimes, we get annoyed by you, but we're always grateful that you're there."
"What about us, then?" Lance asked.
His face went back down to the cards, and he picked out two cards, passing them over to him. "A four and a seven. You're two cards, actually. The four is the lowest on the point range without going into the negative, like a black three. That's what...minus one hundred?" He nodded. "The four doesn't just resemble your voice, but the fact that despite what you say and what you do, the four of us know that you are the most innocent and least confident out of all of us. Yet, you're still there. Like Chris, you're around when we don't want you to be there, but at the same time, we appreciate the fact that you're there. As for the nine, that's the middle card in the spectrum if you count in the ace." He dug out another nine and put it in front of him. "We have the same card, because we are the middle men. The ones that people notice, but don't really notice as much as they should. We're easily forgotten, but we're important, at the same time. No one's sure where we belong."
Another silence enveloped them as they thought about what Joey had told them, and how he had described each of them. It was like hitting the nail right on the head with the hammer. It was a perfect hit, a perfect match. "You brought the whole game into this before. Now tell me what this means: you have all the red threes in the game, which doubles your score. You have two sets of wild canastas, a bunch of red canastas and a few black canastas. The ultimate hand, the one that everyone wants. What does that mean?"
"That, JC, is what everyone wants. The perfect hand, the perfect life. It's almost impossible to get, though, isn't it? Not once have we ever had a perfect hand, because there is no such thing as a perfect life. Everyone knows it, yet we reach for it, like we're ignoring the people that tell us the truth. You can never have the perfect life, and you can never have the perfect game." Leaning back in his chair, he looked around the table at each of his friends, holding their gaze for a moment before moving on. "So, do you guys understand now? I don't know where that came from. Something that just hit me when I was watching you all count up the points and listening to you complain about the scores. I guess the one that the media labels as the dumb one isn't so dumb after all." His eyes went towards the clock again. "I think I'll pass on the game, actually. I have to go and make a phone call. Have fun."
They all waited until Joey disappered into the back before gathering up the cards. No one moved to shuffle them, but instead, looked down at them. "Wow," Justin said soft and slow. "I never really thought about it before, but he's right. I don't think he's ever been that right before."
"Yeah, let's just make sure that we don't let him near a Monopoly game. I'd hate to see what he has to say about the differences between Baltic Avenue and Boardwalk." Chir sput the cards back down and sighed. "I don't think I'm in the mood to play anymore. Why don't we just finish this later?"
"I'm all for that."
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