GG Kis

Éva Kis spent fifteen years as a courtroom stenographer in Budapest, transcribing other people's worst days at two hundred syllables a minute, until a casino open night at forty changed whose days they were. She still takes it all down. Chat, needle, the muttering after a bad roll, typed into the same shorthand she used for depositions and read back that evening, and there are people in her division whose habits she can quote from a year ago. She plays cash for a living and keeps the backgammon side to a fixed stake with four players she has known for years, which she describes as the only sensible way to lose money. Composed and unreadable, she turns the cube like a well-timed bet.