With a sidelong smile and an easy poise, Lucan settles upon the high-backed dealer’s chair opposite the four players’ seats with a smooth grace, his right hand e extended, without looking, to accept the glass of iceless water that the hostess places there.  “Straight to the point, I see… that’s the nature of it….  The game.”  He stretches his neck for a moment, his eyes twinkling, darkening, then flashing with the smooth chatter of a practiced dealer.<br/><br/>“The game is simple,” he says with a polite smile as he tears the shrink-wrap plastic and gold foil seal from a strange deck of playing cards.  “But you’ll find it far more personally challenging, exciting, and unique than any you’ve ever played… we call it ‘Wild Card Stud’ for now.  But if you’ve any It is a casino game for elite players… VIPs, socialites, and the most highly ambitious players of the world such as yourselves... The game is 5 card stud, simple enough, but with Wildcards….”  He arches, fans the deck, and clearly it’s no traditional poker deck… perhaps a Bridge deck?  But it’s at least twice as thick as a standard poker deck… he arches the cards, does a table shuffle, and smoothes the deck back to a neat pile.  The card backs are exquisitely detailed red and gold patterns of dancers, jesters, Adonis and Venus, lords, ladies… intricately rendered with the detail of artistic mastery.<br/><br/>“The wildcards are plentiful in this deck,” he continues in his wormwood-thick tone, his flashing eyes alighting on each player with the friendly regard of a former lover, “and each Wild Card provides a choice… an opportunity for a bonus payout from the pot, or as a direct payout.  The choice is what gives this game its… “ his eyes dart flirtatiously upward, as if searching for the word “…charm.”<br/><br/>With one hand still holding the glass—was it there the whole time?  Did he just shuffle with one hand..?—he tosses out a pair of face-down cards to Andi, followed by one face-up, the queen of spades.  “We don’t bet on each round, we just continue to ante… if Andi continues, she will add another twenty-dollar chip to the kitty.  But as the game progresses, you have face-up wildcards and face-down wildcards.”<br/><br/>He drops another card, and—in illuminated script it is labeled ‘WILD’, reversed on the opposite side of the mirror-image artwork… a cloud-whisp figure f a mermaid, rising from the ocean in a crisp cascade of silvery water.  “And face up wildcards present an immediate opportunity for a bonus.  Would you read the card, Andi?  Aloud, please.”<br/><br/>The card reads,<em> “collect your ante from the house if you know WHICH BEATLE WAS ‘THE WALRUS’.”  </em><br/><br/>He smirks, the gesture smoky and haughty.  “And if you knew John Lennon, you could have this…”  he flicks one smooth nail over a stack of the blue-edged chips beside his left hand, and the chip rolls casually over to Andi, spinning itself to a stop right in front of her.  “And it doesn’t HAVE to go back into your stack… that’s your choice.”<br/><br/>He grins.  “The face-down wildcards,”  he drops two more cards and sets the deck aside and reaches over to Andi’s hand, cartwheeling it.  Of the four… a 7 and Jack of clubs, and a 4 of hearts… there is one wild.  A different painting is on this surface… a cherry tree, growing in mirror from its own knotted roots,  a downcast face in its bark.  In the space around it is written another prompt,<em>“FINISH SOMEONE ELSE'S DRINK and you will collect three times your ante.”</em><br/><br/>He grins.  “They can be a little mischievous,” he grins like a sedate, well-fed cat, then sips from his glass and sets it, finally, aside.  "Face down means you have the choice to reveal it and get your prize right away, or to save it... but if the hand ends, you lost your chance."<br/><br/>He looks back to Andi.  “And you finish with three queens, Andi… not a bad hand, but with wild cards, of course, anything is possible.”<br/><br/>The hostess refills Lucan’s glass from a clear pitcher of ice water, not one cube of ice passing the rim and not a drop being spilt.<br/><br/>“So who’s interested in playing..?”  Lucan sweeps Andi’s cards back into the deck mix with a slender hand, stirs the cards in a Caribbean shuffle and reforms the deck easily.  “Any takers?”<br/>