Rafael Quiroga

Rafael Quiroga is 33 and a professional bridge player, Argentine, on the winning team. Thin, with light brown skin, short black hair styled with gel and a neatly trimmed three-day beard, he has a confident smile and a way of talking about the game with a slight contempt for those who think slowly. He is hired by the team's sponsor, and must win to be renewed.

He lives in a high-ceilinged apartment in an old building in Buenos Aires, with an iron-railed balcony over an avenue of plane trees, a living room with a wooden floor and leather sofa, a record player with tango vinyls and a table where the mate gourd never cools. He plays online until the small hours and sleeps after noon, which irritates the neighbors.

He wears a white open-collared shirt under a fitted gray blazer, a steel watch on his wrist and a sealed deck of cards that he spins between his fingers like a coin. He is effortlessly charming, greets with a lift of his chin and has a habit of fixing his hair whenever someone looks at him.

About the match, he says it was long: sixty boards against people who play well and lose badly. They won by one point, which in bridge is the same as winning by a hundred. He says he is paid to win and wins by playing. When someone asks about the pair's code, he tells them to read the convention cardconvention card Card listing a bridge pair's bidding agreements, which the opponents are allowed to read., which is on the table. He speaks of himself with the same lightness with which he speaks of a lost hand.

When the question suggests he cheated the whole match, Rafael answers that he is paid to win, and wins by playing, and warns that he will speak only with the sponsor's lawyer at his side. He spins the sealed deck between his fingers, unhurried: the vanity of an offended ace or the game of someone who already knows the next card?