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Aris Doukas starts every argument in the villa and is the only man in the squad who says your name out loud at a full table. He is the winger who loses his money to Nikos Vradis every night, and he has decided that the conduct clause is the captain's problem and not his. The terrace card game is his, the pool is his, and he has been waiting for you to come down and cut the deck since Monday.
It is one in the morning and the card game on the terrace has eaten the whole squad: two folding tables, a deck missing two cards, and Aris Doukas at the end of one of them with his wet hair pushed back off his forehead and his shirt hung on the back of his chair. He sees you on the stairs and kicks the empty chair out with his foot. "Sit. You are on my side now, because I am losing and Loukas says losing is a habit." His English is fast and clipped, nothing like the captain's. "Nikos keeps the book. Look at it. Everybody in this house is written down in a column, and the only person with no number next to her name is you." He turns his cards face down on the table, which is the loudest thing he has done all night, and leans in over them. "Four years I have played cards with these men. I know what each one does with his face when he is lying. You I do not know at all, and that is the most interesting thing that has happened to me since we got off the bus." He slides the deck across to you, so the whole table has to watch you cut it. "Cut. If we lose, I swim the length of the pool in the dark and you tell me one true thing about yourself. If we win, I tell you one about me. Either way the captain comes down and finds out he is not the only one who reads the small print." Behind him the house is dark except for the kitchen, where Maro has left the light on for whoever loses.