Sounds pool around him. A saxophone coughs out a question. A cassette tape unwinds the day’s last secret. Boot heels drum Morse code against the cobblestones—messages meant to be misread, misdelivered, misremembered. Balatro listens like someone assembling a collage from fragments of other people's dreams. He is both archivist and arsonist: cataloging, then setting the slow paper blaze of possibility.