by Steve Fisher
“I won’t be living here the next few days.”
“That bellboy—”
“Who cares what a bellboy thinks?”
“I’m not staying. I’m leaving Las Vegas.”
He swung toward her, the shirt he had selected to wear still in his hand. He was barefoot. “That’s right—you were going to tell me why.”
She gazed at him steadily. “Well, just because—I can’t cope with you. I found that out last night.”
“It was a pretty miserable night.”
“What has that to do with me?”
“I didn’t have anybody to talk to.”
“In a casino full of people?” She was giving him back his own words.
He nodded. “In a casino full of people.”
She was scared now. “Joe, don’t talk this way.”
“Why not? You did, didn’t you? Last night in my office? Who started all this? I was kaput with you. You wanted to come back. All right, you’re back—and you’re not running out!”
“Yes, I am!”
He pulled her to him and she struggled. He kissed her anyway, then let her go.
“I’m not like you, Joe. I just can’t—”
There was a knock on the door and she broke off. Neither of them spoke while the waiter pushed the food cart in, then arranged the plates.
“We rushed it as fast as we could, boss.”
“Fine.”
When the waiter closed the door, Joe poured coffee. He drank the first cup black, then put sugar and cream in the second one, and sat down and wolfed his food. She stood watching him.
“You need sleep!”
He nodded as he ate. “Yeah.”
“The skin on your face is all pinched and—”
“Then why do you give me trouble?”
She thought for a moment, and then her eyes grew softer. “You mean you—need me?”
“Could use you,” he grunted.
“Use?” She was confused again.
“Bello has a slave girl. Needs her like a hole in the head. But maybe she gives him—I don’t know, a lift of some kind. Knowing that she’s right there with him. He’s had a lot of experience, knows all the little psychological devices that make the big difference in a showdown. That’s what we’re having here at Rainbow’s End. A showdown.”
He climbed to his feet, put on his shirt, started buttoning it.
“You need me,” Sunny asked, “as a psychological device?”
“Maybe.”
“From you that’s a big concession.”
“Do you accept?”
“There’s something I don’t understand. Why do you have to stay there every minute he’s playing? Why couldn’t it be somebody else—one of your employees?”
“Lots of reasons—important reasons. There are constant decisions to be made—whether, for instance, to allow a certain kind of bet he might want. Only someone of equal experience and crap shooting stature can handle it. Trust a decision like that to the pit boss, or even the floor manager, and if they guess wrong, it can begin to cost me the whole casino. Besides—with an action like this where outside pressures are putting on the big show, maybe somebody’s gotten to your pit boss. A real gambler is always alone. He can’t trust anybody.”
“I didn’t realize—didn’t know it was that bad. That serious.”
“Sunny—stick around until it’s over. Will you do that? I don’t want you hanging by the dice table, the way Bello’s girl does; but when I conk out for a while or—anything else, I’ll know that you’re somewhere within hollering distance.”
She said: “Somebody to talk to the way you don’t talk to other people?”
“You were right.”
“I’m glad.” She came close to him. “That’s nice cologne.” He grinned. “You smell nice, too.”
Now her face darkened. “I really can’t cope with you! I’m afraid!”
“Don’t be. I won’t be much in a mood for making love while the siege is on. And after it’s over, you can go if you want—run as fast as you can back to your schoolroom. But I want you here in the penthouse. I don’t want to have to look for you all over the hotel area. Just pretend you belong here temporarily and don’t let a bellboy with a dirty mind bother you.”
He sat in a low chair, pulling on socks, then squeezing his feet into shoes.
She smiled down at him. “The part I like is—that you need me. Its hard to believe.”
“I didn’t say exactly that.”
“It’s close enough.”
“Then you’ll stay?”
“Yes.”
He stood up and, touching her arms, felt goose pimples. She tilted her chin so he could reach her lips, and he did; and was very close to her. Then her chest was rising and falling, and he thought it was passion, but it wasn’t, at least not that alone.
He was holding her at arm’s length now. “Joe, promise me something.”
“I promise.”
“But you don’t know what it is.”
“How many guesses do I need?”
“And you promise?”
“Yes. If you’ll take care of me.”
“I’ll take care of you!”
She felt safer now, and returned to his arms, kissing him.
“Frustrated schoolteacher—that’s what I am! Twenty-four years old and still a—baby.”
“How come? A bewutiful woman like you—”
“You just don’t know how some people are. I live with my family. A big family . . . strict Italian father. Strict? He’s a tyrant! Treats me like I’m still twelve. Buns off every man that—oh, why go into it? It’s a long, stupid thing that makes me sound stupid every time I try to explain it!”
“If he’s so strict, how come he lets you visit Vegas?”
“He thinks I’m with my aunt in Utah.”
“You got her wired to back up the story?”
Sunny nodded. “What was it I called you—an animal?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe I’m the animal!” Then she amended: “But a religious one, and a good one and—” She suddenly laughed. “This is ridiculous! You practically kidnap me, move me into your apartment—and I’m standing here making excuses to you! How funny can the world get?”
He smiled, delighted with her, then looked at his watch. “I’m going back to the circus. Keep tabs on me, baby doll.”
“I will.”
“Don’t run off or anything.”
“I won’t.”
He kissed her gently on the forehead, and left.
Eleven
A Negro cannot get into any Las Vegas casino or club, big or small, on the plush Strip, nor in any of the grubby downtown area places. He is refused the right to gamble, drink or even linger in any of them unless he is an entertainer or a janitor. There was once an exception—the huge, lavish Moulin Rouge: first interracial hotel-casino in history’. But it was not on the Strip, nor even in the crowded downtow’n section—it was across the railroad tracks, a half mile up a street called Bonanza Boad. It featured three spectacular floor shows nightly—white and colored chorus girls mixed—but it didn’t last very long; it closed. Now it is dark and empty.
It was 7 P.M. and night again (day really; this, the early evening, was the real beginning of the day) and Mai was back at the keyboard. The stools before him were filled. Sunny’ Guido occupied one of them. She was wearing an inexpensive black and silver cocktail dress, and was paying less attention to the music than to the number three crap table.
Joe was at the number three table. He looked wan from lack of sleep, his face lined. Bello stood opposite him, gaunt now, needing a shave, his bristly, snow-tipped whiskers untidy and aging him; but otherwise he was the same expressionless gambler who had started throwing dice sixteen hours ago. Rumor had floated over to the piano that he was half a million dollars ahead of the house. A few more hours of bad luck, and Joe could be in serious trouble. The tension of what was happening was all over the casino and in S
unny Guido’s eyes.
Mai lifted his hands from the keys and asked his customers: “Any special song you’d like to hear?”
And somebody said—the way somebody almost always did, any time, anywhere you asked for requests:
“Yeah—play “My Melancholy Baby.”
Mai began to play it, and after one run-through, sang it, too; and was startled at a new feeling the old song had for him. Maybe because Bello’s girl Dee suddenly emerged from the big crowd around the crap table, and walked past the piano slowly, looking at him, then searched for a nearby cocktail table. There wasn’t any available, but Diane, the waitress, prevailed on a couple seated at a table for four to let her sit opposite them. They agreed and Dee sat down, looking up at the piano. She had evidently slept through the day, because she looked fresh, brand-new.
And Mai thought: Man, she’s something! Like I mean something. A real fabulous little doll: high cheekboned face, those lips. What a gorgeous plaything she’d make! He concluded the song.
“Boogie,” urged a tipsy lady customer, “play us some real lowdown dirty boogie.”
That mood fitted Mai exactly. He started slow at first, no identifiable melody, but a mean repetitive beat; then he began working it up, wild and crazy, keeping the same one-two obscene undercurrent. Gradually, melody fragments filtered through, but the dominating theme was the constant bass, like tom-toms, the tempo rising.
So far he’d made no vocal sound, but moved his head with the music, and held his mouth tightly shut. Bringing the tempo up even more now, he looked at his audience. They were all with it, drawn into it, but the women more than the men. Sunny Guido was trying to subdue her emotion but the suggestion in the beat had reached her. This was jazz—undisciplined, primitive and dirty’. He saw that Dee, too, was devoting herself to the growing frenzy’ of notes. Bello’s girl. Her eyes were wide, her face was glowing, and she seemed almost afraid to absorb any more of it; she was holding both hands tightly around her highball glass.
Hell, he thought, I haven’t even started yet. You won’t really hear anything until I’m lost in it—way out; gone with the wind in it—deaf, dumb and blind to everything but the rock, the beat, the low screaming, the fast running, the hard breathing. I’ll reach a peak so high, you won’t be able to stand it. I’ll take you out of this world with it. Listen, now, because I’m starting. Now I’m starting. Like I mean, I’m starting! Let’s rock it; man, let’s go—let’s ride. Come on, faster, crazier, wilder. Listen to those beat-up mixed-up notes!
He was with it now, losing his mind with it, oblivious to everything else, and he began to scat-sing—jumbled, unintelligible word-sounds that matched the notes, coaxed the beat. Scat-song words that moaned low, whimpered, sighed, shouted, cooed, purred. He worked it up, kept the rhythm throbbing, increased the beat, and now began to spiral toward a crescendo. Faster, faster: hold on, baby, hold on tight, here we go; go now; go, go, go; rock with me. Rock me hard. Harder, harder, harder. All the way to Loveville. Lift me off this world. Give me that ecstasy.
Give it to me. Now! Oh, roll, roll, roll—oh, rock, rock, rock—ohhh!
When he stopped playing, he was drenched with sweat, and he realized that he had closed his eyes. It was a moment or two before he could climb back down to the piano. Then he was aware that people were applauding. The customers on the high stools before him, and almost everybody in the cocktail lounge who’d been within range of his voice.
Sunny Guido’s face was drained of color.
When Mai turned to look at Dee, she was getting to her feet; she seemed nervous, and left without glancing back. So he didn’t know whether the boogie had finally really gotten to her or not, and was disappointed. But a moment or two later, Diane came up to him.
“The young lady asked me to give you a request.”
“You mean Dee?”
The waitress nodded. “Meet Me in St. Louis. ”
Mai was irritated. “In the first place I don’t know that song. In the second place, she’s already left.” He indicated the table where Dee had been sitting.
Diane shrugged.
He began playing listlessly, vaguely upset—and then it suddenly hit him: way out on the north side of town there was a crummy little place called the St. Louis Club.
The song title was an invitation for a rendezvous.
Twelve
A constant and infallible percentage of every dollar that is put down on a gambling table goes to the house. It varies from hour to hour, and even from day to day, but by the end of a month reaches an average. With dice it is 7 1/2 percent, but on blackjack never less than 30 and often higher. Roulette rakes in anywhere from 40 to 70 percent profit for the house, and the slot machines from 40 to 80 percent, depending on how tightly the screw in the back of the one-armed bandit has been fixed.
Now, at 7:25 P.M., the noise in the heavily packed casino was growing into a roar; the room was so full, people could scarcely brush past one another; the maître d’ at the dining room door, trying to take reservations for the first floor show, was issuing fruitless orders for help from casino police. White lights burned down on the green gaming tables. A hundred slot machines clanged.
Joe, standing on the house side of dice table number three, didn’t know whether he could stay on his feet five minutes longer. His head hummed and ached; his eyes were hollow, red-rimmed; his lungs burned from breathing in nothing but solid blue cigarette smoke. Twice he’d asked that the air conditioning be stepped up, only to be told it was turned as far as it would go.
Bello was roughly five hundred and fifty thousand dollars into him, and riding high and mighty. Joe doubted that anything could make him break stride at a time like this, and Bello had to ask twice before Joe heard him correctly:
“Dinner break?”
Joe only nodded.
“One hour,” Bello said.
Joe nodded again and left the table. He had to fight his way through the surrounding crowd, but a security man and his floor manager both reached him after only a few steps; and out of the corner of his eyes he saw Sunny get off her stool near the piano.
“Send me up a filet—rare. And some soup maybe. For two.”
The floor manager nodded, and Joe made his way to the penthouse staircase. He was halfway up the private entranceway when he heard noises at the bottom. Sunny was arguing with a casino guard. Joe called down to let her in.
In the penthouse, he tore off his coat and shirt and flopped on the king-size bed, lying motionless. Sunny came in two steps after him, then stood silently, not knowing what to do.
“Yes, get some sleep.”
“I can’t,” he murmured. He was a man in torment. He rolled over on his back. “I’m dead for sleep, but I can’t even close my eyes!”
She hurried into the bathroom, coming out with a wet cloth. She knelt on the bed and soothed his face, his neck and chest. He frightened her, because his muscles were taut, like stone; it was as if all the muscles had knotted permanently. Blood vessels throbbed in his neck.
“You can’t go down there any more!”
“I have to.”
“But you can’t. You’re having muscle spasms.”
“Nerves, that’s all.”
“It could kill you.”
“Good way to die.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I just wish to Christ I could sleep.”
“Try closing your eyes.”
He only stared at the ceiling. She reached a finger over, shut one eyelid, then the other. They opened again. Now she closed them both, and laid the damp cloth over them. He lay very still, and then she saw his expanded chest sink a little, breath hissing out; the muscles showed a faint sign of untensing.
“Just be still,” she said, “just be still, darling.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t talk; don’t move.”
“Know what you said?”
“You’re falling asleep.”
“ ‘Darling.’ ”
“
Did I? Did I say that? That’s funny.”
“Good, though.”
“Good and funny?”
“No, just good.”
“Sleep now.”
“Food’s coming.”
“I’ll keep it warm. You can eat it later.”
She was on the bed, kneeling over him, so close that she felt his heart give a sudden flutter. It alarmed her; she was terrified. Then the heartbeat was normal again, and he was slowly relaxing. She said a silent prayer. The cloth was still over his eyes, and she smiled at him, very gently. Now there was a knock at the door, and all her efforts were for nothing, because he jerked the cloth from his face and jumped to his feet. She stood, too.
“Joe, it’s just the waiter.”
“I’m starved.”
“You were almost asleep.”
The waiter rolled the dinner cart in.
“Set it up fast,” Joe said.
“Yes, sir.”
“But you musn’t eat fast,” Sunny said. “It won’t do you any good if you do. Try to be calm while you eat.”
“I’m calm.”
“Your hands are shaking. Is that calm?”
“You notice everything, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I’m trying to be a very efficient psychological device.”
When the waiter was gone, they sat down at the table. Joe took three spoons of soup, then pushed the bowl away and pulled the blood-rare steak over in front of him. He had devoured half of it when he noticed she wasn’t eating.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m too nervous to eat.”
“You’re nervous?” It struck him as funny. He almost laughed.
“Anyway, I hate rare meat.”
“That’s different. Throw it on the fire a while longer.”
“No, I’ll eat later.”
He finished the steak, but didn’t touch anything else: salad or vegetables. He drank two glasses of milk.
“How much time left?”
“Time?”
“One hour.”
She looked at her watch. “You left the dice table about twenty-two minutes ago.”
“Wake me up in thirty-five minutes.” He rose, lit a cigarette, took two puffs, and put it out.
“You have to sleep longer than that!”
