Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Happy Rain Night by Evans Dean Freas Kelly Illustrator
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 152 lines and 7685 words, and 4 pages
Oh, well. Just another woman. Another twenty minutes and they'd be closing up and he could go home for the big sleep everybody enjoyed during the synthi-rain. He spun his wheel idly and looked away.
"You running this wheel or just modeling for a space artist?"
The croupier jerked his eyes around. Then he blinked. The woman with the black hair and the golden modo-strap was standing at his wheel giving him a sour eye. He pulled himself together, worked a little house-smile for her.
"Dreaming," he admitted. "Like to try the wheel?" He felt sorry for her. Poor kid, she should stick to the quarter-teel machines.
He watched her flip the pocket in her plastiskin. He watched her with eyes that began to bulge as he saw the amount of credits she piled out on the table in front of him.
"What's the current odds on whether the scientists have figured out whether space is infinite?" she asked.
His eyes were still bulging, but he looked away, checked on the chart. My God, the long shots these amateurs take! "One hundred and two thousand to one," he said. "As of ten twenty-two tonight, which is the last quotation I have."
The woman nodded. "That gives me plenty of room for my elbows. Spin the wheel and see how I'm doing."
The croupier hesitated. "Those credits," he said warningly. "You mean to bet them all?" He made a rapid calculation out of the corner of his eye. "You must have five or six hundred thousand...."
That made the woman grin. "Shucks," she said. "What do you take me for?"
The croupier blinked again. He was quite sure he didn't know.
"Bet one thousand only," she said. She watched him sigh with relief. Funny, she thought. The guy had a conscience, and in a place like this. She watched him spin, watched the teleckto-spin whirr, slow, come to a clicking stop.
"Ninety-nine thousand six hundred and four," he said. "To one."
"Uh huh. And now what does the chart say?"
The croupier checked. "One hundred and two thousand to one. It hasn't changed. Sorry, Miss." He raked in the teels.
"That was fun," said the woman. "So much fun I'm getting bored stiff. Rake in the rest of these teels, too. Stick 'em in your pocket."
"WHAT?" The croupier's eyebrows jumped.
"Yeah."
"I'm not so good on my telepathy tonight," he said coldly.
"Skip it. I'm like a guy named Slan you used to read about. Had shields up around my brain."
That brought a cell of silence around the table. The croupier didn't speak, didn't blink, didn't breathe, didn't do anything.
"Looking for a man," said the woman finally. "Space-happy guy named Artie Sterling. Know him?"
The croupier caught a glint of something hard in the woman's eyes. He still didn't say anything.
"Don't think you're selling a good joe down the canal," the woman went on. "If you thought that, drop it. There isn't a creeping, crawling, oozing thing on all Mars to compare with him. I know. Who would know better than me?"
The croupier still didn't say anything. But his eyes said it for him; they were asking a question as big as space itself.
"The guy's my husband," said the woman. She stopped. She studied the worry lines that responsibility had embedded in the croupier's forehead.
She said: "You look like a nice hard-working man, to me. A good family man. You probably got a nice wife, couple of nice kiddies at home. You worry a little sometimes, though, because the money a croupier makes isn't a hell of a lot. And growing youngsters need this and that and the bills pile up and a man worries and the end isn't in sight because you're young yet and there's years and years of struggle still coming up."
The croupier swallowed. He took a breath. He looked down at the thousands of teel credits on the table. He looked up again.
"Look at me," said the woman. "Look at what the guy did to me. You can see it in my eyes."
The croupier did look. Then he took another breath and then he looked down once more at the money on the table, and then he did something that would probably make him spit for the rest of his life every time he stared into a mirror. He whispered:
"Yeah. I know Artie Sterling. He was in here this evening early."
The croupier took a last long drowning breath and his rake started to pull in the teels. "Okay, lady, okay. The guy's shacked up right now in Residential, Number 327. With somebody else's wife. That what you want to know? That what you wanted me to say?"
The woman didn't answer. She let her eyes slit contemptuously for an instant before she turned, moved away from the table, and went quickly toward the lock that led to the spacelators outside.
Artie Sterling pulled the woman's arms from around his neck. "Look, baby," he said. His handsome forehead wrinkled, a little annoyed.
"Arthur...."
"Time to be shoving off, baby."
"Shoving off?" The woman's large brown eyes balled with dismay.
"Yeah. Frankly ..." he lifted his shoulders lightly "... frankly, the only reason I dropped in tonight was to sort of say goodbye. Get it?"
"Arthur!" There was shock in the woman's voice.
He grinned at the small figure of the woman beside him. "Up to now it's been great laughs on dull nights, but you know something? Every now and then I ask myself: suppose this guy, this Chief of Security--your husband, you know--suppose one of these nights he should get off a little early. Suppose he should come home an hour or two before we expect him?"
"Oh!" The woman smiled nervously. "That what's worrying you, honey? That's silly. John never does that. Never comes home early. Forget it."
Artie Sterling raised an impatient eyebrow. How do you tell off a dame when she doesn't want to believe it? He untangled himself from the woman's arms. He got to his feet. He said sharply:
"Look, baby. Here it is: it's done, see? Great fun, like I said, but it's done. Gone. Burned out like the hulls of hell. I'm shoving off."
That one did it. The woman was suddenly aware of it. He could tell that by the way her eyes shot open and then dulled quickly. That's the way they all act at first. They get over it, of course, but at first it's always like that.
He watched her get to her feet. Admiringly. He still appreciated the neat little figure she had. Still admitted she was a doll to look at. He watched her go to a black metallic desk against a wall. Open the center drawer. He said protesting: "Baby, I don't want that bracelet back I gave you. Hell, that's a souvenir. Keep it. When old Artie gives a gal something he means it."
"I'm not giving back the bracelet, Arthur." The woman's hand went into the drawer, came out again. The hand held a heat gun. "No, Arthur. Not the bracelet."
"Baby!" Utter shock laved the handsome man's features.
"You wanted goodbye, Arthur? All right. If that's the way you want it. If you're sure."
"The night of the big sleep, Arthur." Her finger jerked on the heat trigger.
The man was only human after all. His hands came clutching tight, pressing frantically at a spot about where his navel would be. But it was late for that, and when he fell it was straight forward and down.
The woman looked at the handsome black waves of his hair. Death doesn't change that. No, not immediately, it doesn't. She sobbed once and fainted.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page