Spoonbenders

by Daryl Gregory

  Then the spin. At least the sound was the same as the church set in his garage. Frankie kept his eyes on the white pill racing along the track.

  “Be the ball,” Buddy said in his ear.

  Love the ball, Frankie thought.

  Of course the casino wouldn’t let him touch the pill. He’d have to befriend it from a distance. “Who’s a good boy?” he said under his breath. “You are. Yes you are. Land on black for me, okay? Black, black, black…”

  The croupier glanced at him, then looked back to the table and called, “Black! Twenty-six!”

  The Cro-Magnon grunted. Frankie smiled. “Good boy,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Frankie and the pill were the best of pals.

  Mitzi sat behind her desk, hardly anything visible but that wizened face and a pile of hair, like a shrunken head. “What, no gifts?” she asked.

  Frankie tried to smile.

  “Because I got to tell you, that philo-ultra-magic whatever put me regular as a Swiss clock.”

  “Really?” He felt an egg-sized warmth high in his chest. Hope, or heartburn, or both. “I’ll bring some over next time.”

  “And what do you got for me this time?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, but words failed to arrive. He lifted his hands. They hovered there for a second, and then settled nervously on his knees.

  Mitzi didn’t seem surprised. She’d probably read the news on his face as soon as he walked in her door.

  “You’re at forty-four thousand, five hundred and eleven,” Mitzi said.

  Jesus, the interest was killing him. “I know,” he said.

  “And seventy-eight cents.”

  His hands came up again, failed to get any lift, and came down hard. “I know that’s serious money.” He took a breath. “I was just wondering, maybe you could—”

  She cut him off. “I can’t do anything for you, kid. You did this. And now it’s out of my hands.”

  “I just thought that maybe, I don’t know, since we’ve known each other so long, you could maybe talk to Nick Senior? Put in a word?”

  Mitzi stared at him. “A word? What word would that be? ‘Abracadabra’?”

  “Our families go way back, right? Teddy and Nick Senior—”

  “You don’t know shit about Teddy and Nick.”

  “Okay, sure, Dad didn’t tell me everything, mum’s the word, right? I don’t ask for specifics, and Dad’s a pro, he don’t tell. I just thought if you ask your brother to let the son of an old friend—”

  “No, Frankie. You’re going to talk to Nick.”

  “What?”

  “And he’s not in the mood for this shit. It’s a bad time. You read the papers?”

  “The trial,” Frankie said.

  “They say Junior’s going to testify against his own father,” she said. “Family turning on family. So you really want to appeal to history, you go right ahead and try that. But if I were you, I wouldn’t show up with your hat in your hand—not unless you got at least ten grand in there.”

  “Ten?”

  “Ten is the minimum to keep Nick from going ballistic. Bring twenty.”

  “Where am I going to get twenty grand?”

  “You’ll think of something,” Mitzi said.

  You bet your ass I’ll think of something, Frankie thought.

  Later, whenever people talked about the best times of their life—a topic that often came up in the bars he frequented, among people whose inventory of great times was pretty thin—and it was Frankie’s turn to lie, he’d tell people about the day his twins were born. But the twins’ birth was two minutes of mucus-coated awe after eighteen hours of Loretta thrashing and cursing like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. No, the best time of his life was the first hour he spent at the roulette table in the Alton Belle riverboat casino in September 1991.

  His first bet was on the basket, the zero-one-two combination. The croupier scooped up his chips and placed a marker there. Buddy stood behind him as the pill circled the track, and when it dropped onto the zero, his brother grunted in satisfaction. Frankie could hardly contain himself. Fist pumping may have been involved. He’d only bet a hundred in chips, but at eleven to one he’d just made back a third of his stake.

  “Take your time,” Buddy said. Advice that was undercut by the fact that Buddy kept checking his watch.

  Frankie decided it would be too risky to keep winning on the same numbers, so he put two hundred down on the first dozen. The numbers one through twelve were scattered around the wheel, and in order to win he needed to get the pill to drop at the right time; one number early or late was no payout. The first time he missed by a digit. He’d felt the pill that time, almost like it was rolling in the palm of his hand. The heavier weight, he realized, made it feel a little closer to the pinballs he used to have such rapport with.

  “It’s good to lose a few,” Frankie said to Buddy. His brother nodded, not worried at all.

  Frankie put two hundred more down on the dozen, same bet as before, and the next spin came up on the black six. Two-to-one payout, four hundred bucks.

  The pill loved him. Wanted to please him. It would slow down or speed up as he desired, happily bound over nonpaying slots and rattle home in his favorite numbers. Frankie kept his bets small, trying not to attract attention, but the urge to push all his chips onto, say, double-zero was nearly irresistible.

  An hour in, Frankie was holding fifty-three thousand dollars in chips. The waitresses wouldn’t stop bringing him drinks—he was ordering gin and tonics, his dad’s drink—and a crowd of other players had gathered around the table, trying to absorb some of his luck. Everybody was trying to play with him, chips all over the layout. Why the hell hadn’t he done this before? Frankie thought. He should have moved to fucking Reno ages ago!

  “This is a great gift, Buddy,” Frankie said. He was tearing up he was so grateful. And maybe a little drunk. “Thank you.”

  Buddy seemed embarrassed. “It’s nothing.” He picked up a stack of chips, and started counting them into his hand.

  “What are you doing?” Frankie asked.

  “I need these,” Buddy said. “Exactly one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “What for? Wait—is this another part of the vision?”

  “Definitely,” Buddy said.

  Far away, the steam whistle blew again; the boat was approaching the dock. The first cruise was over, and the next one would be starting up soon. Frankie didn’t want Buddy to leave him—he’d been counting on his brother to keep everything in line with his visions. But Frankie had to admit, he had the roulette portion under control. And if Buddy had a scheme for another part of the boat, slots or Keno or craps, Frankie shouldn’t stand in his way. Any game in the casino was vulnerable to his brother. Any jackpot was there for the taking.

  “You go do it, Buddy,” Frankie said. He handed him another five hundred in chips. “Knock ’em dead.”

  Buddy looked at the extra chips, then set them back on the table in front of Frankie. “I’ve got what I need,” he said. “Just keep playing. Don’t stop.”

  The croupier sent the ball spinning and called for bets.

  “Wait,” Frankie said to Buddy. “I’m supposed to go for one more hour, right? Where do I find you after?”

  Buddy checked his watch. “I’ll find you,” he said, and headed into the crowd.

  Frankie didn’t like it, but he kept his cool. And after a few more spins, it was clear his friendly relationship with the pill was intact. Other players started to copy his bets, and he could feel the crowd’s attention on him. It was like being onstage again with the Amazing Telemachus Family, but better. He was the solo act. The closer. The top bill. If only his mother could see him now.

  “Twenty-eight,” Frankie said. “Straight up.” One number, thirty-five-to-one payout.

  The croupier gave him the merest glance, and Frankie could read her disapproval. Well, fuck you, lady! he thought. I’m here to win. I know it, the crowd knows i
t.

  Then the pill dropped onto the twenty-eight, and the laughter and applause broke out around the table. Someone clapped him on the back. The woman next to him, a chubby redhead with friendly green eyes, giggled and rested a hand on his forearm.

  On the next bet, Frankie said, “Let it ride.” The redhead gasped. Very satisfying. Myriad hands pushed chips onto the layout, everybody wanting to get on the party bus. He barely needed to look at the wheel to tell the pill where to drop.

  The shouts went up like fireworks.

  He suppressed the urge to take a bow. In front of him was more money than he’d ever dreamed of making.

  A man in a dark suit and gold name tag had appeared behind the croupier, whispering into her ear. The croupier nodded, then stepped away from the table. The man with the name tag waved another croupier forward, this one a burly white man.

  The new croupier called for bets. Frankie took a small stack, just a thousand bucks, and bet on red. It was a double-or-nothing payout, like hardly playing at all, but it gave him time to think. This time he didn’t try to control the ball, just let it run around the track, off the leash.

  “Red! Thirty-two!” the croupier said. Another win. The floor manager or pit boss or whatever he was had not left the table. He looked at Frankie with a blank expression that could have meant anything.

  Shit, Frankie thought. Now even blind luck was fucking him over. He needed to lose, and now. He left the small stack on red, and matched it with another thousand. The crowd seemed disappointed. To go from a straight-up bet to a time-waster?

  He couldn’t leave the table, though. That would break the vision. And what would happen then?

  “Tissue, champ?” It was the redhead.

  He’d started to sweat. Nixon-versus-Kennedy sweat. He took the handful of Kleenex and mopped his eyes. The pill was humming along the track, and he was thinking, Black black black black—

  “Red!” the new croupier said. “Red seven. Seven red.”

  “Fuck,” Frankie said.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the redhead.

  “Pick a number,” Frankie said. Belatedly he put a smile on his face.

  “I think you’d better do that,” she said.

  “Please. Any number.”

  “Twenty-one,” she said.

  “Great.” Frankie pushed five thousand onto twenty-one, then watched with dread as the croupier replaced the stack with the marker. The pit boss was staring at him. Frankie glanced at his watch. He just needed to last five more minutes. Five minutes! Then he could cash out and get the hell out of here.

  The redhead gripped his arm more tightly as the pill slowed. “Come on, twenty-one!” she said.

  “Jesus, just shut up,” he said under his breath.

  “What did you say?” She pulled her arm away.

  “Nothing, just—” His eye was on the ball. Months of practice had taught him to judge velocity. And God damn if the pill wasn’t heading for the neighborhood of twenty-one: nineteen, thirty-one, eighteen, six…and then it dropped. Twenty-one.

  “FUCK ME!” Frankie shouted.

  Later, he realized that it looked very much like a bomb going off. The roulette wheel jumped ten feet into the air and spun away like a flying saucer. The pill shot into the crowd. Every chip around the table—Frankie’s huge stacks, the croupier’s supplies, the winnings of every player at the table—exploded ceiling-ward and rained down. Every customer within fifty feet of the table became a shouting, grasping, delirious animal.

  The redhead looked at him in shock. “What did you do?” she said.

  Firm hands grabbed him under his arms. Two large men in dark suits had seized him. “This way, asshole,” one of them said, and they hauled him toward a door.

  “It wasn’t me!” he shouted. “It wasn’t me!”

  He left Mitzi’s Tavern, thinking about big numbers. Big numbers and contingency plans. How the hell was he going to raise twenty grand? There was only one way.

  “God damn it!” He’d pulled into the driveway and had banged into a line of big plastic buckets, sending them tumbling. Farther up the driveway sat bags of cement mix, a stack of blond lumber, and a pallet of something covered by a tarp. He backed up and parked in the street.

  Buddy squatted by the front door of the house. He was hammering away at a wooden frame that he’d erected around the cement step. Frankie marched down the driveway, heading for the garage and the back of the house, ignoring him.

  Buddy put down his hammer and stood up. “He’s not there.”

  “The Buddha speaks,” Frankie said. Then: “Who’s not there?”

  Buddy said nothing.

  Frankie walked toward him. It looked like he was building a form to repour the cement step, which had been listing for the past decade. But why now? Why anything, with Buddy. “Why do you care who I’m looking for?” Frankie asked. “Maybe I’m looking for Irene.”

  Buddy squinted at him. Then Frankie realized that Irene’s car was nowhere in sight.

  “Okay, fine,” Frankie said. “Where’s Dad? And don’t you fucking shrug at me.”

  Buddy stood very still, emphatically not shrugging. After thirty seconds, Buddy said, “It’s all going to work out.”

  “Really? Work out?” Frankie stepped close, getting in his space. “Work out like the fucking casino?”

  Buddy blinked down at him.

  Jesus Christ, all Frankie wanted to do just then was clock him. But he’d never laid a hand on his brother. When they were kids, Buddy was too small to smack, and then, suddenly, he was much too big. At any size, though, there was no point to it. It’d be like punching a golden retriever.

  Buddy’s gaze went glassy, like a TV show had clicked on in his head.

  Frankie snapped his fingers at him. “Hey. Retard.”

  Buddy focused on Frankie. He frowned.

  “Why’d you do it?” Frankie said. “Come on. Just come clean.” Buddy had never told him where he’d disappeared to with his stack of chips. Never told him why he’d sent him to the Alton Belle in the first place. He was supposed to be rich, damn it. Bellerophonics would have been saved, and he wouldn’t be in hock to the fucking Outfit and wondering if the next time he stuck a key in the ignition the van was going to explode.

  Buddy said, “It’s all going to—”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” Frankie said. “Of course it will.”

  AUGUST

  10

  Buddy

  The World’s Most Powerful Psychic has been dead for twenty-one years. Long live the World’s Most Powerful Psychic.

  Buddy doesn’t feel powerful, however. Time’s riptide is having its way with him. He’s clawing to stay in the present but keeps being dragged over and over into the past. Once, his memory of the future was as lengthy (and full of holes) as his memory of the past. But now, there’s so little future left. Everything ends in a month, on September 4, 1995, promptly at 12:06 p.m.

  Zap.

  Sometimes when he thinks about that day he’s terrified. Other times, he’s merely sad. He will miss out on so much, but what hurts most of all is that he will never see his true love again.

  But still other times, he’s grateful. There are undoubtedly many awful things to come after that dead stop, and he doesn’t have to watch them over and over. The future will no longer be his responsibility. Someone else will become the World’s Most Powerful Psychic, and he’ll be able to rest at last.

  The small supply of futurity, however, only makes the pull of the past stronger. He knows he can’t wallow in history, but sometimes—like right now, this very moment of consciousness—he longs to be somewhen else, somewhen cold, snow outside the window. Because in this now it’s ninety-five degrees and the sweat is running off his naked chest. He’s bent over the front step, setting out ceramic tiles in rows and columns, and his underwear is plastered to his ass. It’s imperative to lay out the tile, dry, before cementing it in place.

  “So is this the way you want it?” a voice asks. O
h, right. Matty—the fourteen-year-old version—is helping him. He’s mixing up the thinset in one of the big plastic buckets.

  Buddy nods. But then the kid moves on to new questions. Wants to know everything about the Amazing Telemachus Family. Where they performed, what people thought of them. Buddy ignores him. The less Matty knows, the better. At least, Buddy thinks that’s true.

  Matty keeps talking. He really wants to know about his grandmother. What did she do onstage? Did she really work for the government? “Could Grandma Mo travel outside her body?” he asks.

  This question makes Buddy look back at the boy and frown.

  “You know,” Matty says. “Like, walk through walls?”

  Buddy stares at him.

  “Because that would be real useful, right? That would make her the perfect spy.”

  Buddy nods slowly.

  “How far do you think she could travel? I mean, all the way into Russia? Frankie said the Russians had psychics, too. Do you think she could go anywhere she wanted?”

  Buddy shakes his head. She had no limits, he thinks. Nothing could stop her except for one thing. Time.

  His mother sits across from him at the kitchen table. There’s snow outside the window, and soon his father will come home with pizza for dinner, and his brother and sister will rush in, their jeans soaked, faces red from the wind, after sledding with the big kids. But now, right now, he’s in the warm kitchen with his papers and crayons—and Mom. She is doing her own project, reading and rereading a stack of business papers with business numbers on them. She’s been crying, but now she’s stopped crying, because she sees he’s scared.

  “Show me what you’re drawing,” his mother says.

  He doesn’t want to. It’s sad. But she’s seen his other sad drawings, so he moves his arm and she leans forward. It’s a black rectangle surrounded by green except for a few scribbles of red and yellow. She says, “Are those flowers?”

  “I’m not good at them,” he says.

  “Oh, I think you are,” she says. “And I like that there will be flowers near me. It’s a really nice grave, Buddy.”