Vigorish by John Berryman (fox in socks read aloud .txt) 📗

The girl sniffled, and her long skinny arm reached around behind me to snag a couple sandwiches the size of postage stamps from a waiter's tray. She wolfed them down, wiping at the end of her long nose with a wadded-up hunk of cambric. She'd done it before, and plenty, for her nose was red and sore. She made cow-eyes at me.

"Don't say it," I told her. "I'm not your darlin' Billy."

The dice were to my right—I'd get them after a couple more losers rolled. My unwanted hustler stood on that side of me, too. They never have any money of their own. I wasn't about to give her any of mine.

I wanted to lose some dough in a hurry. I started playing field numbers, and TK'd the dice away from the field every time a gambler came out. Of course, I could have let the table's six per cent vigorish take it away from me, but that would have taken longer.

Even with losing on every roll, the dice got around to me before I had lost the nine hundred I had set out to drop. I put four chips on the "Don't Pass" side of the line, shook left-handed because of my weak right arm, and got ready to come out. Sniffles seized me. "Don't Billy Joe!" she said suddenly. "You'll lose!" She pushed my chips across the line to the "Pass" side. That burned me up.

"Get your hands off my chips," I said, annoyed by bad gambling manners. Her face was all resignation and sadness. Well, not quite all. A lot of it was thin, red nose and buck teeth.

"You'll lose, darlin' Billy," she said.

"Pull those chips back!" I said. Her eyebrows shrugged, but she did as I told her. I came out, and tipped the dice to eleven. I kept the dice, but lost my chips, which is what I wanted. Throwing six more down on the "Don't Pass" side, I rattled the ivories in my left hand. Tears began to roll down her unhealthy cheeks.

"Lose!" she cried nasally, and sniffled. "Billy Joe! Listen to me, darlin' Billy! You'll lose!" Her eyes rolled up toward the top of her head as I ignored her and came out. Sniffles gasped, "Hit's a seven!"

Well, that's the number I'd tipped them to, but she called it before the dice stopped rolling. That left me thirteen chips. Half absent-mindedly, I put three of them on the "Pass" side of the line and tipped the dice to twelve. Mostly I was looking at this scarecrow beside me.

"Box cars!" one of the dealers called. "My future home." But he wasn't as quick as Sniffles. She had called the turn before the galloping dominoes had bounced from the backrail.

The box cars cost me the dice. The next gambler blew on them, cursed, and rolled. I didn't bet, and spent the next couple rolls looking at her.

The girl was a mess. Some women have no style because they don't even know what it means. Courturiers have taught them all to be lean and hungry-looking. This chicken was underfed in a way that wasn't stylish. They call it malnutrition. Her strapless gown didn't fit her, nor anybody within twenty pounds of her weight. She was all shoulder blades and collarbones. I suppose that a decent walk would have given her some charm—most of these hustlers have a regular Swiss Movement. But this thing had a gait that tied in with the slack way her skirt hung across her pelvic bones and hollered "White Trash!" at you.

I wasn't much flattered that she had tried to pick me up. People have a pretty accurate way of measuring their social station. And she thought she was what I'd go for. Well, I guess I don't look like so much, either. I'd missed my share of meals when they might have put some height on me. My long, freckled face ends in a chin as sharp and pointed as her nose. And there's always something about a cripple, even if my powerless right arm doesn't exactly show.

My days on the Crap Patrol came back to me. That's where the Lodge had found me, down on my knees in an alley, making the spots come up my way without even knowing I could do it. And when they'd convinced me I was really a TK, and started me on the training that finally led to the Thirty-third degree, they'd put me right back in those alleys, and cheap hotel rooms, watching for some other unknowing TK tipping the dice his way.

Did Sniffles have it? She wasn't tipping dice, exactly, but she sure was calling the turn. She was tall, as well as skinny, and our eyes weren't far apart. "Billy Joe," she whispered above the racket of the gambler in the casino, putting her mouth close to my ear. "I told you, sugar. And now you lost. You lost!" Her perfume was cheap, but generous, and pretty well covered up her need for a bath.

"There's some left," I told her. "Show me how." She hugged my arm to her skinniness. That's all any of the hustlers ever want—to get their hands on your chips. They figure some of them will stick to their fingers.

The gambler next to me had won a dollar bet without my help. He acted mighty glad for a win—maybe it was a while since he'd hit it. I decided to give him a run of luck.

Now in charge of my chips, Sniffles called the turn on every roll. She was hot. It wasn't just that she followed where the gambler next to me put his dough—she was ahead of him on pushing out the chips on half the rolls.

He quickly saw that my chips had stayed on the same side of the line each roll as his. He cursed me for a good luck mascot. "Stick with me, Lefty," he said. "We'll break the table!" I rammed a hard lift under his heart, and then, ashamed of myself, quit it. He turned pale before I took it off him.

"What's the matter?" I asked him, supporting his sagging elbow, still mad at myself for acting so childish.

"Nothing, nothing," he gasped, starting to recover. He'd only been dying, that's all. But it came in second-best compared to holding the dice.

No point calling too much attention to him. I decided four passes were enough while he held the dice. What do you know, as he came out for the fifth time, Sniffles pulled my stack of chips to the "Don't Pass" side of the line, while scraping at the chapped end of her skinny nose with the back of her free hand.

Like every compulsive gambler I've ever seen, the roller next to me was sure he was on a rampage. Four passes and he thought he had the dice licked. "Ride with me!" he yelled at Sniffles, who plainly had the management of my chips.

"No moah," she said. "You'll lose."

Of course he did. I TK'd the one-two up. "Little Joe from Kokomo," one of the stick-men called. They raked losing bets and paid winners with the speed of prestidigitators. "Roller keeps the dice," the stick-man told my neighbor.

The gambler cursed and threw the dice to the roller on his left. He spat blame at Sniffles for not riding with him. He was one big clot of crushed misery. After all, hadn't he wanted to lose? They all do. I couldn't get very upset over his curses. So far he had lost one buck, net. And he'd had some action. So much for gamblers.

I kept control of the dice while each new gambler handled them. I was having a good night. Of course, by that time I had handled the dice, which always improves my TK grip. Every point I had TK'd came up. For all the perception I kept on the ivories, I could sense no other TK force at work, which after all was the whole reason for my gambling.

The interesting note was the way Sniffles handled my chips. Sometimes more sure than others, she occasionally let a winning stack ride. On other rolls, she keened and chanted oddly to herself, eyes closed, and pinched down most of the stock. But she was never on the wrong side of the "Pass" line. I kept track, not wanting my stack to build up past the thousand with which I had started. Most of all, I watched the skinny gal dope the dice, sniffle and wipe the end of her nose. She was one homely sharecropper, that was a fact, but she had a nice feel for Lady Luck. Or for what I planned next.

Wanting to come out with an even thousand, I adjusted the size of her last bet. When I won it, I pulled my chips off the table, which Sniffles didn't resist. She used the lull to grab a handful of sandwiches from another waiter's tray. A gambler at the far end of the table came out, calling loudly to the dice. The cubes made the length of the table, bounced off the rail and came to a stop dead center, between me and the three stick-men in the black aprons. That's the instant when every eye is on the dice, trying to read the spots. And that's when the dice jumped straight up off the baize, a good six-inch hop into the air, and came down Snake Eyes, the old signal. Wow! I'd had it!

"TK!" somebody yelled. He might as well have screamed, "Fire!" the way that mob of gamblers scuttled away from the table.

"No dice," one of the dealers said automatically. He raked the hopping cubes sadly to him with his hoe-shaped dice-stick.

I made a break for it with the rest of the crowd, trying to keep my eye on Sniffles. But she had the sure-loser's touch of slipping away from any authority. She vanished into the milling mob. My last glimpse had been of a skinny arm reaching up to pluck some more free hors d'oeuvres from a tray as she fled.

I should have saved myself the trouble. They had a bouncer on each of my elbows before I had moved five feet. They carried more than dragged me into a private dining room behind the bar. It went along with the ersatz rustic decor of the rest of the Sky Hi Club. There was sawdust on the genuine wood floor, big brass spittoons and a life-sized oil-color of a reclining nude, done with meaty attention to detail, behind a small mahogany topped bar. Stacks of clean glasses vied for space with labeled bottles on the back-bar.

One of the stick-men followed us into the room, taking his apron off as he closed the door behind him, shutting out the roaring clatter of the casino. "Cross-roader!" he hissed at me. I should have known what was coming, but I missed it. He slapped me hard across the face, saving his knuckles, but not doing my jaw a whole lot of good. I would have fallen clean over, but the bouncers were still tight on my elbows.

"Wait!" I tried to say, but he cuffed me with the other hand, harder, if that were possible. This is the moment when you have to stop and think. A Blackout is quite effective—it's hard to hit what you can't see. And there's something mighty unnerving about being stricken suddenly blind.

Oh, face it, I suppose the real reason I felt for the arteries supplying blood to his retinas was that so few TK's can do it. I clamped down tight, and his lights went out. He cried out in fright, and both hands came groping up in front of him, his fingers trembling.

"I'm blind!" he said, not able to believe it. He began to lose his balance.

I felt one of the bouncers go for his sap. "Try it, you gorilla," I told him, wrenching around, now that I was free on his side. "Try it and I'll rip the retinas off your eyeballs the way you'd skin a peach!" He recoiled as though I were a Puff Adder. The other bouncer let go of me, too. I skidded in the slippery sawdust, scared half to death, but got my back against a wall just as the stick-man who had slugged me lost his orientation completely and fell to his knees in the sawdust. It would be some minutes before his vision started dribbling back.

The click of the door latch broke the silence. One of the other stick-men eased himself in, holding the door only wide enough to squeeze past the jamb. Don't give