My Dearest Queen of Clubs:

     Hi again.  I'm sorry I haven't written sooner but I've been busy with my cat.  Seems anymore that merely keeping him fed is a full-time job, then comes the brushing, the petting, the cleaning up after him, the constant making of little mew-mew noises, and the unspeakable rigors of peek-a-boo hour.  Honestly, I don't understand how these creatures ever survived in the wild without my constant care and entertaining facial expressions!  Fortunately, he's napping now, allowing me a few moments to reaffirm my utmost love for you.  If this message ends suddenly, however, never fear.  I have a catnip mouse beside me now and shall claim to have been busy cleaning the slobber off of it should The Beast appear.
     Anyway, how have you been, my Precious Little Playing Card?  No recent misdeals, I trust?  No getting lost down the cold air register again?  
     The other night I had a terrible dream about one of your kind's being used as a coaster by a drunken Frenchman too lazy to walk across his boudoir to get a magazine out of the bidet to set his glass of absinthe upon.  How my heart raced as I awoke in utter terror!  How relieved I was to realize that he'd actually used one of your sisters instead of you!
     Not that I wish your sisters any harm, of course.  It's just that I simply can't bear the thought of you slowly suffocating under the misplaced glass of a snail-eating sot, lovestruck romantic that I am.
     Which reminds me to ask: How are your two heads these days?  Any luck yet in figuring out which one to sacrifice to the surgeon's knife in an attempt to cure that awful constipation you're always frowning about?  For what it's worth, I recently read about a certain jack in Scotland that was accidentally cut in two by an unsupervised tyke with a pair of safety-lockless scissors. Both halves survived!  Of course neither will ever be invited out of the drawer for another evening of poker, but there are worse fates for a waxed paper product.  Emergency corpse toe-tag is merely the first one that comes to mind. 
     But forgive me - I fear I might only be adding to your royal stress when what I want to do is make you the happiest card in your suit, if not in the entire Western Hemisphere.  Indeed, there's nothing I wouldn't give or do to make you laugh in ecstasy - and not merely because a neighbor said he'd give me $24 if I could so much as make you grin.  Such fools don't understand that you have an image to maintain and a job to do which precludes such public displays of your inner joy.  "If our cards started smiling at us, who'd be able to keep their mind on whose deal it is?" I always say.  Why?  Because I think I understand the real you despite what everyone else seems to be saying behind my back.
     And the fact is, I adore the real you - now and always, here and forever, face up or face down.  Just as I loved the fake you that once tried to find alternate employment as a bus pass in Wyoming.
     And it's because I love you that I have to ask: Is everything really ok?  A friend who said he saw you in Vegas claimed you looked thin enough to slip under a door.  You'd tell me if your anorexia came back, wouldn't you?  You'd allow me to gently cut another slit between your lips and feed you carefully puréed foods until the doctors told me to stop again - right?  
     Of course you would, so not another word about this out of me.  
     Just remember: I shall always be here for you, darling, exactly as I was after that nasty shuffling accident back in '75.  And exactly as I was the last time you suffered from the delusion that you were too fat to be part of anyone's full house.
     But hark!  Is that my wife I hear approaching?!  Oh, how she scared me the other day when she mentioned her desire for a new deck!  I thought for sure she was on to us, but no.  What a relief to discover I'd merely misheard a vowel!
     Still, I think it best if I go now.  Not because I want to, of course, but because time for further expressions of my love just doesn't seem to be in the cards tonight.  
     Sorry.
     Sorry as well to be using a semi-public forum like this to express a devotion to you that we both vowed to keep secret but, since you stopped answering my email messages and taking my calls, what choice do I have?  The Monopoly Chance cards refused to act as go-between, my Scrabble game would only allow me to use seven letters at a time for my messages, and I knew from past experience that the props from Clue tend to unduly alarm your security personnel.  Until a better way comes along, this is it.  Adjust already.
     Until next time - take care, my Gaudily-Garbed Highness!  And rest assured that if human weakness forces me to play Solitaire in your absence, it shall only be with a deck of certifiably blank white cards!
     
     With Endless Hugs and Kisses for the Wild Card of my Dreams -

                   New Deal Danny
     

     P.S. - If you get the chance, tell King boy that his recent attempts to retouch his hair with a black marker makes him a sure-fire candidate for the discard pile.