In a dream, she came to him. Long, smooth thighs and soft golden down on her arms; blue eyes deep as the past, misted with a fine scintillance like lavender spiderwebs; taut body that was the only body Woman had ever had, from the very first. Maggie came to him.
Hello, I’ve been traveling a long time.
“Who are you?” Kostner asked, wonderingly. He was standing on a chilly plain, or was it a plateau? The wind curled around them both, or was it only around him? She was exquisite, and he saw her clearly, or was it through a mist? Her voice was deep and resonant, or was it light and warm as night–blooming jasmine?
I’m Maggie. I love you. I’ve waited for you.
“You have blue eyes.”
Yes. With love.
“You’re very beautiful.”
Thank you. With female amusement.
“But why me? Why let it happen to me? Are you the girl who—are you the one that was sick—the one who—?”
I’m Maggie. And you, I picked you, because you need me. You’ve needed someone for a long long time.
Then it unrolled for Kostner. The past unrolled and he saw who he was. He saw himself alone. Always alone. As a child, born to kind and warm parents who hadn’t the vaguest notion of who he was, what he wanted to be, where his talents lay. So he had run off, when he was in his teens, and alone always alone on the road. For years and months and days and hours, with no one. Casual friendships, based on food, or sex, or artificial similarities. But no one to whom he could cleave, and cling, and belong. It was that way till Susie, and with her he had found light. He had discovered the scents and aromas of a spring that was eternally one day away. He had laughed, really laughed, and known with her it would at last be all right. So he had poured all of himself into her, giving her everything; all his hopes, his secret thoughts, his tender dreams; and she had taken them, taken him, all of him, and he had known for the first time what it was to have a place to live, to have a home in someone’s heart. It was all the silly and gentle things he laughed at in other people, but for him it was breathing deeply of wonder.
He had stayed with her for a long time, and had supported her, supported her son from the first marriage; the marriage Susie never talked about. And then one day, he had come back, as Susie had always known he would. He was a dark creature of ruthless habits and vicious nature, but she had been his woman, all along, and Kostner realized he had been used as a stop–gap, as a bill–payer till her wandering terror came home to nest. Then she had asked him to leave. Broke, and tapped out in all the silent inner ways a man can be drained, he had left, without even a fight, for all the fight had been leeched out of him. He had left, and wandered West, and finally come to Las Vegas, where he had hit bottom. And found Maggie. In a dream, with blue eyes, he had found Maggie.
I want you to belong to me. I love you. Her truth was vibrant in Kostner’s mind. She was his, at last someone who was special, was his.
“Can I trust you? I’ve never been able to trust anyone before. Women, never. But I need someone. I really need someone.”
It’s me, always. Forever. You can trust me.
And she came to him, fully. Her body was a declaration of truth and trust such as no other Kostner had ever known before. She met him on a windswept plain of thought, and he made love to her more completely than he had known any passion before. She joined with him, entered him, mingled with his blood and his thought and his frustration, and he came away clean, filled with glory.
“Yes, I can trust you, I want you, I’m yours,” he whispered to her, when they lay side by side in a dream nowhere Of mist and soundlessness. “I’m yours.”
She smiled, a woman’s smile of belief in her man; a smile of trust and deliverance. And Kostner woke up.
The Chief was back on its stand, and the crowd had been penned back by velvet ropes. Several people had played the machine, but there had been no jackpots.
Now Kostner came into the Casino, and the “spotters” got themselves ready. While Kostner had slept, they had gone through his clothes, searching for wires, for gaffs, for spoons or boomerangs. Nothing.
Now he walked straight to the Chief, and stared at it.
Hartshorn was there. “You look tired,” he said gently to Kostner, studying the man’s weary brown eyes.
“I am, a little,” Kostner tried a smile, which didn’t work. “I had a funny dream.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah…about a girl…” He let it die off.
Hartshorn’s smile was understanding. Pitying, empathic and understanding. “There are lots of girls in this town. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding one with your winnings.”
Kostner nodded, and slipped his first silver dollar into the slot. He pulled the handle. The reels spun with a ferocity Kostner had not heard before and suddenly everything went whipping slant–wise as he felt a wrenching of pure flame in his stomach, as his head was snapped on its spindly neck, as the lining behind his eyes was burned out. There was a terrible shriek, of tortured metal, of an express train ripping the air with its passage, of a hundred small animals being gutted and torn to shreds, of incredible pain, of night winds that tore the tops off mountains of lava. And a keening whine of a voice that wailed and wailed and wailed as it went away from there in blinding light—
Free! Free! Heaven or Hell it doesn’t matter! Free!
The sound of a soul released from an eternal prison, a genie freed from a dark bottle. And in that instant of damp soundless nothingness, Kostner saw the reels snap and clock down for the final time:
One, two, three. Blue eyes.
But he would never cash his checks.
The crowd screamed through one voice as he fell sidewise and lay on his face. The final loneliness…
The Chief was pulled. Bad luck. Too many gamblers resented its very presence in the Casino. So it was pulled. And returned to the company, with explicit instructions it was to be melted down to slag. And not till it was in the hands of the ladle foreman, who was ready to dump it into the slag furnace, did anyone remark on the final tally the Chief had clocked.
“Look at that, ain’t that weird,” said the ladle foreman to his bucket man. He pointed to the three glass windows.
“Never saw jackpot bars like that before,” the bucket man agreed. “Three eyes. Must be an old machine.”
“Yeah, some of these old games go way back,” the foreman said, hoisting the slot machine onto the conveyor track leading to the slag furnace.
“Three eyes, huh. How about that. Three brown eyes.” And he threw the knife–switch that sent the Chief down the track, to puddle in the roaring inferno of the furnace.
Three brown eyes.
Three brown eyes that looked very very weary. That looked very very trapped. That looked very very betrayed. Some of these old games go way back.
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream Page 15
