Someone call for the Paddy wagon

When we last left our intrepid hero, although we didn't know he was intrepid at the time, or a hero, just some dude taking a drag on a cancer stick in that oh so suave way that macho guys with fedoras do while mastering the skill of aloofness that attracts sexy broads and not just in the movies, he was about to sit down to a life-altering game of whist. Yes, I'm going to make you click on that -- well, not make, because I'm not a king, though if I was, I would, but I wouldn't wear a fancy ass purple robe --

"It'd fit your purple prose."

You want a purple bruise? But a scepter would be cool because then I could clock wise guys on the noggin. Anyway, go read part one, which wasn't part one when I wrote it, then come back to the present day to find out what happens next. Why am I continuing that piece of haphazard claptrap now? Fuck if I know, why don't you go ask Randal.

No, not me, that drunk in the corner.

There, in the center of a very round table, rounder than any circle he had ever seen, sat the deck of cards, right in front of a single empty chair, only one because the other three were occupied by members of The Daughters of the Bohemian Yugoslavs, some of whom had daughters, some who did not, though all of them were. And though Leon tried, scrutinizing every luscious curve that folded and pleated every fold and pleat of their Bohemian raiment, every line in their naughty brow, he could not vouch for their Yugoslaverie.

He shuddered to think that, hidden amidst this bevy of Central European beauties, lies a spy, a devil with not necessarily a blue dress on (though it could be that blonde worthy of a Botticelli), from the diabolical Empire of Transylvanians whose ghoulishly imperial designs on the Kingdom could be sated only by blood. But they were all dames with meowing cats, so he didn't mind that much.

In a spiffy, sultry cadence, the sheba sitting across from him spoke, brushing away a stray curl the color of a lacquered coffin ready for a freshly dug grave. No, I'm not foreshadowing. You paranoid?

"I guess we're partners," she said, her lush timbre rattling the bones beneath his faux-leather bomber. He was smitten and had forgotten how to deal. Laying his gruff, workmanlike fingers on the deck, he pushed them towards the smoking woman.

She laid her cold, slender digits on his, pushing them back. His skin hummed like the buzz of the cigarette luckily caught between her ruby red lips. Wondering what it would be like to be that cigarette, he felt trapped, but in a good way because he was, after all, the only man at the table. That is, until he saw the mischievous look radiating from her neon green eyes like steam from a busted radiator.

"Go on, Paddy, deal. If we win, I'll tell you everything you want to know."

Flabbergasted that she knew his nickname, a bit of secrecy to which only a precious few were privy, his icy demeanor crumbled and he cleared his throat, audibly as it turned out, as the entire establishment turned to see what all the fuss was about.

"And if we lose?"

She smiled, as a vampire would before tasting the sweet nectar of her defenseless prey, if vampires were real, which everyone knows they're not, don't be stupid.

Tune in next time, I don't know, autumn or so, when I get around to writing part three. Who is this chick working for? Who is he working for? Is she a vampire? Is he? Are we? Does Frankenstein make an appearance? Prescott Bush? H.G. Wells? Vlad the Impaler? Gary Oldman? Can I stop asking questions now?