“Yes sir. Try showing up to ol’ Baudelaire Quatro’s Place with a false Parsnit deck, a pitiful pack of dead paper. They’d right slit your throat for that. They’d tie you to a rock and dump you right in the swamp water.”

“Can you teach me to play?” I asked him, for what was probably the ten thousandth time.

Mom looked up from where she sat reading, casting a fierce eye on my daddy.

“Naw Buddy boy,” said Pop, chuckling. “You’re far too young to be messing around with the sort of riffraff that play Parsnit. Nope, your pop is long retired, he is. Just keep this deck here for sentimental reasons. Like I said, this Parsnit deck here is a work of the rarest of arts.”

“The rarest of arts indeed,” said Mom, grinning a little.

“It’s a fact,” said Pop. “This deck here can whoop any Parsnit player in the Swamplands. Provided that the right fella wields them of course.”

“Ah yes,” said Mom. “The pride of the Parsnit player.”

“You saying I should be ashamed of all the duels I’ve won?” said Pop.

“Oh certainly not,” said Mom. “It’s just that you have something made by—what’d you call it, the ‘rarest of arts’—and all you can think to do with it is make some money.”

“It ain’t just about the money, and you know that, darlin’,” said Pop. “You know good and well Parsnit’s about more than that.”

“Okay then,” said Mom. “It’s not just about money. It’s also about winning.”

That flustered Pop a bit, I could tell. After a minute, Mom lowered her eyes to her book. Pop leaned in close and whispered to me. “Truth is, I’m pretty sure your dear sweet mother would not approve of me teaching you Parsnit. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“If you ‘dear sweet’ me one more time,” said Mom, not bothering to look up from her book, “you’ll be sleeping in the outhouse tonight.”

I must have looked so dejected at that news that Pop said, a bit too loud, “I figure it’s okay if I tell the boy the basics, right sugarplum? It sure won’t hurt the boy to know a bit about the rules of the game, were someone out there to someday wind up playing it.”

Mom sighed a little, but she didn’t say anything else.

“I think we’re in the clear,” whispered Pop. “Okay, here’s the basics. Parsnit tells a story, each card does, the chance of it, the cunning of the player, how well he can react. How well he knows his cards, and how well his cards know him.”

“How can cards know a person?” I said.

“That’s one of the great mysteries of the game, ain’t it? And oh what a powerful sight it is to see two Parsnit masters at play. You watch how the two dueling stories become one, how they turn and tangle into the same story, how they set off on a journey together, where only one player can come out alive. It’s downright intoxicating, it is, both for the players and for the crowd. And I imagine for the cards as well.”