Chapter 39: Pinochle (Part-2)

Round 2

The second hand's cards were re-dealt with an almost ceremonial flitting of the deck, Jonathan squaring his shoulders as he appraised the fresh holdings arrayed before him. An undisguised gleam entered his eye at the vaunted bounty of Trump now cradled in his grasp - the ace and 10 of diamonds awaiting their inevitable unleashing upon an unsuspecting victim.

Sensing an opportunity ripe for plucking, Jonathan opened the bidding with a confident volley of 30 points.

Across the table, Sarah's brow furrowed with consternation as she absorbed the implication of her counterpart's gambit. Her new hand, while reasonably well-balanced, contained nothing overtly substantial without insight into the as-yet undetermined trump suit. Still, she knew better than to turn aside her dad's initiative lightly - she bumped his bid upwards to 32 in response.

Victor unleashed a sidelong glance toward his new business partner, silently questioning if her brazen overture hinted at mere bravado or calculated overconfidence. When at last his turn to bid arrived, Victor simply inclined his head and stated in an even baritone, "34 points."

The bid now cyclically returned to Jonathan, who seized upon the scenario with a cavalier flourish. "40 points," he proclaimed immodestly before turning over his melds with a consummate lack of preamble. The cherished ace and 10 of trump diamonds burst forth to the baize surface, already seeding him with a staggering 30-point headstart!

Sarah stifled a melodic sigh of resignation, advancing a mere 8 points worth of scattered undercards and mid-value court pairings that paled against Jonathan's opening onslaught. Victor followed suit by casually exposing his relatively meagre meld - the king and queen of spades worth a battled-hardened 20 points.

Now the skirmish shifted to the playing field as Jonathan, having irrefutably proven his trump superiority, led out with his high diamond holdings. The first three tricks fell to him virtually unchallenged as he systematically bruised any attempts by his opponents to muster defensible suit holdings.

Sarah valiantly tried stemming the bleeding by clearing out her lowest remaining side suit cards in hopes of isolating a haven. But Victor remained ruthlessly opportunistic, cannily collecting hard-won tricks wherever Jonathan's trumpeting advances allowed the smallest of openings.

When the acrid smoke finally cleared, the scoreline reflected a shockingly lopsided outcome: Sarah 28, Jonathan 65, Victor 50. Jonathan had executed a near-flawless stratagem, racking up the entirety of his boldly bid 40 points through a combined onslaught of impeccable melds and precision trumping. While the grand campaign remained young, he had emphatically struck first blood.

Round 3

A palpable tension hung in the air as Jonathan meticulously squared up the deck in preparation for redistributing the cards once more. His brow glistened with the faintest sheen of perspiration - either from the thickening ambience of the oak-panelled parlour or the rising stakes of their ongoing skirmish.

Sarah fanned her newly dealt 16-card hand, shuffling through the familiar latex-smothered bounty as her coppery tresses shielded her inscrutable countenance. Her eyes suddenly widened, twin gemstones set alight by a flicker of unmistakable opportunism. There, nestled amongst the mundane face cards, lay the foundation for a truly regal scoring path - the queen of spades seamlessly coupled with the jack of clubs to form the genesis of a potentially massive pinochle run in the same lurid suit. If fate merely favoured her with one more corroboratory court card of either lineage...a full 48-point onslaught could be unleashed!

Steeling her features into an inscrutable mask, Sarah opened the bidding with a calculated modest figure of "20 points." She daren't overplay her hand prematurely.

Across the plush baize, Jonathan maintained his trademark stoic exterior - the closest he ever came to overtly revealing his innermost gambits and machinations. Still, his keen instincts could not restrain the faint spark of awareness from illuminating his gaze. In addition to a thoroughly resourced spread of high trump holdings, his astute eye had identified the components for not one, but three separate melds awaiting mere assembly. The slightest of self-satisfied smirks played across his chiselled features as he weighed his options.

At last, all scrutiny turned to Victor as he deliberately arranged his newly gleaned holdings into their suited columns and scanned their integrated prospects. His customary smirk emerged anew as he detected not one, but two distinct sets of promising trumps majestically peeking forth from the arrayed resources. Barely stifling a haughty chuckle, the old lion prepared to set the stakes.

"I shall raise the bid to 25 points," Victor announced in his trademark gravelly timbre while making a show of nonchalantly tapping one end of the cards against the aged oak tabletop.

Sarah's dainty nostrils flared almost imperceptibly as she weighed her options, her gamblers' instincts already detecting the escalating gauntlet her opponents had thrown down. Both men had proclaimed substantive scoring expectations - conservatively grand figures that hinted at larger aspirations lurking just beneath the placid surface.

Finally, the auburn-tressed beauty set her jaw in a glimpse of bold determination. "No more shadows then..." She lifted her bottomless sienna eyes to bore directly into their sceptical gazes. "32 points shall be my bid."

A silent exchange of raised eyebrows drifted between the two male counterparts as the stakes inexorably climbed. Jonathan's slight smirk remained firmly in place as he pondered the shifting scenario. When at last his turn to bid arrived once more, he levelled an undecipherable look at the expectant Sarah before replying with infuriatingly nonchalant ease, "34 shall be the price of my admission this round."

All eyes turned to Victor as he was put to the same question. After a beat of dramatically feigned contemplation, he gave the slightest of shakes to indicate his standing pat at the current level. The final bid now rested immovably upon Jonathan's broad shoulders.

With a theatrical flourish of card handlers' poise, Jonathan exposed his melds in their considerable glory. First, arrayed across the baize in a dazzling revelation, was the quartered marriage melding of the four regal kings seated amongst the suits - already amassing 24 hardscrabble points straight from the opening salvo! Then, with a subtle sliding of fingers, the supplemental jack and queen of clubs were unveiled in their conjugal splendour to form a supporting 4-point marriage meld of their own.

Sarah's porcelain countenance briefly registered a flicker of dismay before the stony mask of competitive inscrutability reclaimed her features. Across the way, Victor simply nodded in begrudging admiration as he evaluated Jonathan's formidable opening onslaught.

At last, with the melds properly scored, it was time for the ever-critical lead that would set the foundation for the rest of the showdown. Jonathan carefully considered his remaining court card holdings, fingers idly riffling through the reordered layout as he calculated angles of attack and avenues for defensive shoring. Finally, with a subtle intake of smokey breath, his decision was made - the high 9 of spades launched forth as his opening fusillade.

Over the ensuing throes of vicious hand-to-hand combat, Jonathan wielded the impetus of his proven high trumps to relentlessly pummel any attempts by his opponents to solidify their defences. Sarah tried valiantly to isolate her heart holdings as a potential sanctuary while Victor remained opportunistically skulking - ever vigilant for the smallest of openings to exploit with counterattacking trumped tricks of his own.

When the detritus of the final decisive skirmish finally subsided, only Jonathan remained standing above the settled cloud of enmity and riposte. He had brought his fearsome melds to bear through a masterclass of relentless card control and precision trumping - amassing a staggering 62 points on the round alone!

The scores now reflected an imposing shift in the narrative: Sarah 76, Jonathan 127, Victor 50. While Jonathan had opened up a sizable lead, these were two intensely proud and skilled veterans at his heel. The undercurrent of looming counteroffensive was palpable…

From an oversized leather armchair slightly removed from the combat zone, Emily observed the proceedings with a sort of detached bemusement. Unlike her sister who seemed to have been born with playing cards molecularly woven into her blood, Emily had never felt the magnetic pull of the grand gaming traditions that suffused her family history. As a girl, she had watched with a sort of horrified fascination as Sarah and Jonathan would descend into hours-long trances, their entire beings subsumed by the tidal ebb and flow of suits, melds, and psychological feints. In Emily's eyes, pinochle was a sort of insidious mind-eater - a paradoxically thrilling but viscerally draining affliction to be avoided at all costs.

And so Emily kept her distance, both physical and emotional, from the ongoing clash of titans unfolding before her. She had long ago made a conscious decision to shield her sense of self, her essential beingness, from being slowly devoured and subsumed by the grand obsession. A wistful smile played across her lips as she watched the familiar undulations of exhilaration and angst ripple across Sarah's expressive countenance with each torturous revelation. Even their father Jonathan betrayed the occasional microexpression as the grueling mind warfare raged eternal.

For all her intentional removal, Emily could not help but feel the slightest pangs of isolated envy as the two formidable adversaries practically radiated life force, drunk on the heady tides of competition as they faced Victor.She wondered, not for the first time if some part of herself - some integral piece of her identity - remained locked away, barred from her by her aversion to the family's all-consuming pastime. 

Perhaps that empty place could never be filled...or perhaps it remained guardedly awaiting its own grand epiphany, the key that could unlock the shackles of fear and embrace the storm.

For now, however, Emily remained a keenly observant but secular outsider, shielding herself from pinochle's infinite grasping tendrils as the battle for supreme psychological dominance raged eternal before her.