Budapest 1914

"You can't change the past." The soldier aimed. Lodz couldn't breathe. He tried to scream but could only form the words silently, over and over again, "don't shoot." The landscape was fading away around him, into red spots.

He awoke with red spots behind his eyes, dizzy, hearing a strange sound.

He switched on the light.

Scudder was vomiting. Into his soldier's hat, as it turned out.

Lodz leaped out of bed and grabbed a bucket, then went in search of towels.

"Must be those damn pigeons we're eating," Scudder said. Lodz took the hat and threw it into the trash outside the trailer, then filled a basin with water, and set about cleaning Scudder up. Scudder's eyes were strangely shadowed, and his skin was hot.

"You're ill," Lodz said, almost accusingly.

Scudder was a ghastly white, and shivering. "You could cook an egg on me if we had one," he said.

"This will make you feel cold, but it might bring down the fever," Lodz said briskly, laying a wet cloth on the back of Scudder's neck. He put a bucket into place next to the sofa. "Try not to ruin my sofa. The floor is less comfortable. Lean forward." He put a towel under Scudder, and fluffed the pillow under the towel.

"Funny, you don't look like Florence Nightingale," Scudder said. "Except for maybe the hair…."

Lodz snorted. He knew he looked like a cigar store Indian brought to life. "You'd get better care from the army nurses, if you'd prefer," he said.

"Yeah, we like our prisoners healthy for the firing squad. Looks bad to shoot a sick man fulla holes," Scudder snickered.

"Lie back, and stop trying to entertain me," Lodz ordered. He took the cloth, and immersed it again, giving Scudder what amounted to a sponge bath. Not content simply to clean Scudder up, he made a pot of herb tea, and melted down an ancient bouillion cube he had in the cupboard. He left them both in arm's reach of the sofa.

He had the absurd impulse to kiss Scudder on the forehead, but instead simply pressed a cool wet rag onto his forehead, and ruffled his hair.

"Rest," he commanded. "I have to work the Wheel of Fortune today, then do bally swords all night."

"Shower," Scudder ordered back. "You smell like seven different kinds of French armpit. With a goat."

Lodz gave him an broad smile and an obscene gesture, before letting the door close arrogantly behind him. But he did shower. Twice.

When he returned, expecting to see Scudder asleep on the couch, instead he found a clean trailer, and Scudder sitting alert and healthy at the table, sipping rum and reading.

In his left hand, Scudder rolled the silver coin like a pro.

"I burned my uniform. Hope you don't mind I borrowed your shirt. And your pants. Wanna play gin rummy?" Scudder asked him.

He nodded, noticing that the books on the table were all from his theosophical phase. He startled to see that his Havelock Ellis was out, along with "Avataras" and the "Bhagavad Gita." Not at all what he would expect an American soldier to choose to read for entertainment. There was more to Scudder than met the eye. Havelock Ellis?

"So you're a theosopher," Scudder said. "you do all that séance stuff?"

"Once. No longer. Too many words, too few experiences," Lodz said, pouring himself a drink and topping off Scudder's glass, face hidden behind a black veil of waistlength hair. "I prefer experiences. Now I'm merely a forain, a travelling performer."

He shook his hair out of his eyes. If he didn't know better, he would think Scudder had been playing sick to avoid having to work, but he had felt Scudder's skin, and seen his awful color, that morning. He added, "I'm glad to see you've made a quick recovery. I was afraid you had trench fever."

"Nah. Must've just been that rich food you Frenchies cook. I'm not used to it, " Scudder said carelessly, as he made the cards arch and ruffle perfectly between his neatly manicured hands. "Ask you a question, Lodz?" Scudder said, a silvery glint in his eyes.

"If you must." Lodz gathered up his hand and tsked in disgust. The hand he'd been dealt gave him very little to work with.

"How come you're not enlisted?"

"A very perceptive question, my friend. Two reasons. I didn't know which side to be on. I'm not French, but my mother was. French gypsy, actually. Always travelling. My father was a German aristocrat, and I was raised by my grandmother, in Poland, and had school in Paris, and an apprenticeship in Russia. So, you see, my nationality is a bit of an unsettled question."

Scudder nodded, and took up his cards. "You said two reasons."

Lodz felt terribly exposed suddenly, but he simply took a swig of rum and said, "yes, I did. But I didn't say I'd tell you what they were. You're a perceptive man. Figure it out." He affected a half-lidded disinterest in Scudder's reaction.

Scudder smiled, "I think I have."

"Good for you," Lodz said cheerfully, leaning back dangerously in his chair. His long legs never did fit comfortably under the table. "My turn to ask questions. Why did you enlist?"

Scudder's brow wrinkled in a scowl. "I'm born to roam, I guess."

Lodz looked up skeptically from his cards. "More to that story, I believe, my friend."

He had always called everyone that, but saying it to Scudder filled him with a warmth he'd previously only felt for the bears.

"Correct. Gin, you rummy." Scudder announced.

Lodz refilled their glasses.

"When did you become interested in theosophy?" he asked.

"Oh, about," Scudder looked at his pocket watch, "noon. I've been looking for a just about anything to explain to me why I'm so different."

"Not only perceptive, but modest, as well, I see," Lodz said sarcastically. He played three tens and discarded a king. "Vive la difference," he said very softly. "But I doubt any of the answers lie in mysticism." The lamplight gave his face a golden cast, and made sparks seem to dance in his dark chocolate eyes.

"Hey, Lodz. let me show you something," Scudder said, eyes sparkling with boyish glee. He swept up the game, shuffled, and proferred the deck of cards. "Pick a card. Any card."

Lodz laughed. "You don't know how to do this trick, apparently--YOU hold the cards for that one...and you can't do it with a deck like this. Don't try to entertain me with tricks, Scudder-I've been in this business all my life."

Scudder smirked. "Just shuffle 'em up all you want-just like that. Now pick one-you don't even have to pull it out of the deck unless you just want to. Two of clubs. Pick another."

Lodz plucked card after card from the deck, and Scudder named each one right.

"There is far more to you than meets the eye, my friend," Lodz said, glancing around. "Are the cards reflected in the window? My eyes? or how is this

done?"

Scudder smiled, shuffled the cards and dealt another hand of gin rummy.

"Tell you what, Lodz. The day you guess right, how I do it, I'll tell you. But you haven't figured it out yet. Not even close."