Hearts in Atlantis(29)

Pudd'ntane,' Rionda said. 'Ask me again and I'll tell you the same.'

'Ree, don't you think - ' Anita Gerber began.

'I told you, I'm wise to the gaff,' Rionda said. 'Run em, my pal.'

'Without delay,' McQuown agreed, and his hands blurred the three red-backed cards into motion (up and down, all around, to and fro, watch them go), finally settling them in a line of three again. And this time, Bobby observed with amazement, all three cards had those slightly bent corners.

Rionda's little smile had gone. She looked from the short row of cards to McQuown, then down at the cards again, and then at her dollar bill, lying off to one side and fluttering slightly in the little seabreeze that had come up. Finally she looked back at McQuown. 'You suckered me, pally,' she said. 'Didn't you?'

'No,' McQuown said. 'I raced you. Now . . . what do you say?'

'I think I say that was a real good dollar that didn't make no trouble and I'm sorry to see it go,' Rionda replied, and pointed to the middle card.

McQuown turned it over, revealed the king, and made Rionda's dollar disappear into his pocket. This time the queen was on the far left. McQuown, a dollar and a quarter richer, smiled at the folks from Harwich. The plastic flower tucked into the brim of his hat nodded to and fro in the salt-smelling air. 'Who's next?' he asked. 'Who wants to race his eye against my hand?'

'I think we're all raced out,' Mrs Gerber said. She gave the man behind the table a thin smile, then put one hand on her daughter's shoulder and the other on her sleepy-eyed son's, turning them away.

'Mrs Gerber?' Bobby asked. For just a moment he considered how his mother, once married to a man who had never met an inside straight he didn't like, would feel if she could see her son standing here at Mr McQuown's slapdash table with that risky Randy Garfield red hair gleaming in the sun. The thought made him smile a little. Bobby knew what an inside straight was now; flushes and full houses, too. He had made inquiries. 'May I try?'

'Oh, Bobby, I really think we've had enough, don't you?'

Bobby reached under the Kleenex he had stuffed into his pocket and brought out his last three nickels. 'All I have is this,' he said, showing first Mrs Gerber and then Mr McQuown. 'Is it enough?'

'Son,' McQuown said, 'I have played this game for pennies and enjoyed it.'

Mrs Gerber looked at Rionda.

'Ah, hell,' Rionda said, and pinched Bobby's cheek. 'It's the price of a haircut, for Christ's sake. Let him lose it and then we'll go home.'

'All right, Bobby,' Mrs Gerber said, and sighed. 'If you have to.'

'Put those nickels down here, Bob, where we can all look at em,' said McQuown. 'They look like good 'uns to me, yes indeed. Are you ready?'

'I think so.'

'Then here we go. Two boys and a girl go into hiding together. The boys are worthless. Find the girl and double your money.'

The pale dextrous fingers turned the three cards over. McQuown spieled and the cards blurred. Bobby watched them move about the table but made no real effort to track the queen. That wasn't necessary.

'Now they go, now they slow, now they rest, here's the test.' The three red-backed cards were in a line again. 'Tell me, Bobby, where's she hide?'

'There,' Bobby said, and pointed to the far left.

Sully groaned. 'It's the middle card, you jerk. This time I never took my eye off it.'

McQuown took no notice of Sully. He was looking at Bobby. Bobby looked back at him. After a moment McQuown reached out and turned over the card Bobby had pointed at. It was the queen of hearts.

'What the heck?' Sully cried.

Carol clapped excitedly and jumped up and down. Rionda Hewson squealed and smacked him on the back. 'You took im to school that time, Bobby! Attaboy!'

McQuown gave Bobby a peculiar, thoughtful smile, then reached into his pocket and brought out a fistful of change. 'Not bad, son. First time I've been beat all day. That I didn't /^myself get beat, that is.' He picked out a quarter and a nickel and put them down beside Bobby's fifteen cents. 'Like to let it ride?' He saw Bobby didn't understand. 'Like to go again?'

'May I?' Bobby asked Anita Gerber.

'Wouldn't you rather quit while you're ahead?' she asked, but her eyes were sparkling and she seemed to have forgotten all about beating the traffic home.

'I am going to quit while I'm ahead,' he told her.

McQuown laughed. 'A boasty boy! Won't be able to grow a single chin-whisker for another five years, but he's a boasty boy already. Well then, Boasty Bobby, what do you think? Are we on for the game?'

'Sure,' Bobby said. If Carol or Sully-John had accused him of boasting, he would have protested strongly - all his heroes, from John Wayne to Lucky Starr of the Space Patrol, were modest fellows, the kind to say 'Shucks' after saving a world or a wagon train. But he felt no need to defend himself to Mr McQuown, who was a low man in blue shorts and maybe a card-cheater as well. Boasting had been the furthest thing from Bobby's mind. He didn't think this was much like his Dad's inside straights, either. Inside straights were all hope and guesswork - 'fool's poker,' according to Charlie Yearman, the Harwich Elementary janitor, who had been happy to tell Bobby everything about the game that S-J and Denny Rivers hadn't known - but there was no guesswork about this.