CARD PLAYERS

I like playing cards and occasionally we get together for a game. Most often bridge - the game of the intellectuals. You could hardly use this word in our case, though. We sit in Miro's living room, a neighbour of mine. He is usually well-prepared for the game with a generous amount of alcohol, which he has tested beforehand. We get off to a flying start. After the first few deals and somewhere in the middle of the first bottle, the jokes start pouring out.

'Hey, you are easier than your mothers!'

'Man, the card is pounding you on the head. Lucky you that you are not very sensitive.'

'Your wife said something else last night!'

The neighbour's wife serves us food and drinks usually until midnight when she leaves us and goes to bed. It is worth mentioning that she is a plump and robust woman with wide shoulders and evil temper. When you see such a woman you can't help thinking that if a serial killer and rapist meets her late at night, he would rather turn the corner and pray she hasn't noticed him.

There are fathers who are so eager to have a baby son that when fate surprises them with the tender version, they find it difficult to accept the fact. This was the case with the neighbour's father. A former weight-lifting coach, he was determined to make his child a champion in this sport. It didn't matter to him that the child was a girl. He didn't care that his wife was against his plans. The girl used to accompany dad in the sports hall. So, Mimi grew up with the ambition to excel in heavy athletics. She had the suitable genes, she had a motivated coach. Until she became interested in the male half of the population, she was dad's pride being successful in both national and international competitions. Good for her! The first real problem she faced was to find a dress for the graduation ball, followed by the difficulty to find someone suitable to get married to. However, she turned out to be a good and quiet wife. Actually, very few people have had the courage to make her angry.

Miro, for example, never contradicts her. As long as he is sober, of course. At two in the morning, he is usually not. If we are still at the card table at this time, the play is becoming slower, the analyses after each dealing are more and more chaotic and the insults- more direct. One night around 2 a.m., my neighbour was about to lose. It was imminent. And he was furious. As well as quite boozed-up. One of the opponents took him unawares and feinted,

'Hey, you, the host, the salad has finished, there is no finger food. Where's your wife, man. She hasn't been around for hours.'

The host gained all the courage that had remained in him and yelled,

'Mimi, hey Mimi, stop rummaging in the Facebook and come to chop a salad!'

We all knew that Mimi was fast asleep since we could hear her gentle snoring from the bedroom as if she was working with a chain saw there. The snoring stopped abruptly. The instigator took out his phone and got it ready to record a video. Two or three minutes later, the door to the living room opened with a jolt. The handle got loose. Mimi was standing in the doorframe. I hadn't seen her like that before. There was saliva in the corners of her mouth, her eyes were popped out, her hair sticking in all directions and her bulky biceps shrank and expanded convulsively. Her mighty shoulders took up the whole frame of the door. There was a plastics toy sword in her hand. Their son had also woken up from his father's yelling and was whimpering behind her, which made matters worse. If DEATH was to meet Mimi at that moment, he would rather pretend to be cutting grass with his scythe. If Arnold could see her, he would definitely ask her to play the villain in his new film. Even Chuck Norris stood no chance.

The scene made me freeze but I soon regained composure. Miro immediately woke up to the danger and sobered up. Unfortunately, he was not quick enough to bend down. Mimi made a swift step forward and we heard the hit of the sword on his head. I had never seen anyone go unconscious so fast. He might as well have pretended to be dead like someone meeting a bear in the forest. In any case, his reaction was very clever indeed, because she forgot about him and shifted her attention towards us. She didn't say a word. Just walked among us and each step of hers was accompanied by a sabre strike. One per person. We didn't need more. The three of us, big, strong men, suddenly felt deserted and lonely on a battlefield. The telephone with the video received a blow too and flew through the open window. We rushed for the front door, which turned out to be too narrow for the three of us. A powerful kick on the buttocks of the last one helped launch us through the door.

A few minutes later, beaten and barefooted (we didn't have time to put on our shoes), the three of us, having survived from the incident, were walking slowly towards our dens. The cell phone of the instigator was completely broken as a form of revenge, the skin on our backs was burning and we were silent.

How did it happen that a woman beat all of us? In fact, it was just a strike with a plastics sword on our backs, but it felt humiliating. I found comfort in the thought that I am a gentleman and would never raise a hand to a woman. On the other hand, she was far from a sweet frail woman at that moment. She was more like Hulk although one with breasts.

Before we separated to go home, the friend who had provoked the conflict exclaimed,

'Wow, did you see how his wife sent him to sleep?'