"What do you do around here, Billie?" I asked.
"I'm one of the nautch girls. I do a specialty dance. Only it's more the Twist than anything Far East."
"I'll bet you're good."
She smiled up at me. I'm fairly tall. So was she but even in her spike heels I was up to her.
"I'll bet you bet," she said.
"I'll come see you in action sometime," I said.
"Not if Rob gives you a job you won't." She was firm about that.
They had a tavern which really wasn't a tavern and they called it the Klondike. It was right out of the 1898 gold rush. Lots of Yukon atmosphere. They had a floorshow where the girls in the big feathered hats whirled around and threw up their skirts and saluted the audience with their bottoms. A sort of halfassed cancan. They served only soft drinks. It was pretty cute.
Billie took me around to the back. There was a closed door with the usual mysterious word Private on it, and she said: "You'll find Rob upstairs."
"All right," I said. "Now I know where to find Rob. Where do I find you?"
"I told you where I work."
"You said I was too young to see such sights."
She smiled and it was a very pretty thing and I wanted to reach out and take hold of her and start making love to her right there in front of the private door behind the Klondike.
"I'll know where to find you," she said. "If you get the job. The word gets around." Then she said, "Oh. You didn't mention your name."
"I never do if I can help it. So I go by the first half of my last. Thax."
"Thaxton?"
"Uh-huh."
"I'm Billie Peeler."
I looked at her. It was too much of a coincidence to be true. She laughed.
"My agent gave it to me. Only took him an hour of brainracking to come up with it."
"I figured."
"Well," she said, "I hope you get the job."
"Well," I said, "it doesn't really matter, does it?"
Her greengold eyes gave me a look of mild speculation. "That's entirely up to you-Thax!'
I wasn't sure I got that. Then I looked at her eyes again and I was sure. And it did matter whether I got that job or not.
2
This Robert Cochrane reminded me of a character out of _The Informer_. As Irish as Paddy's potato. Built like one, too. Big, round, rough. He didn't have the faith-andbejasus brogue though, which was a shame. Then he would have been complete. He must have been getting on to sixty.
"C'mon in and grab a seat. That one-where I can look at you. Carny man, huh?" He grinned at me like a Halloween pumpkin.
"The word really does get around," I said, and sat in a chair on the other side of his desk. "Or does it show on my face?"
"Gabby gave me a buzz," he explained. "I like to keep in touch."
"Gabby," I said. "Oh, the shooting gallery op." It was one of those ironic reversals. The guy who hardly ever opens his mouth is usually tagged Gabby.
"Spielers I don't need," Cochrane told me right off. "They're a dime a dozen."
"So are strippers," I said. "But who ever turns a pro down?"
The light went on in his pumpkin face again.
"You're good, huh? What have you done?"
I named a few outfits I had worked for. Then I said, "My wife used to have an act. I spieled for her."
He was studying me now.
"What's your name?"
"L. M. Thaxton. Thax is good enough."
His grin came back. "I'll bet that first initial covers up a doozy."
I smiled. "How would you like to be called Leslie?"
"What about this sleight of hand?" he wondered. "You good at it?"
I hunched forward and put both my elbows on the desk, picked up a number four pyramid-shaped sinker he used as a paperweight in my left hand and held it up to him. Then I made a flicker of motion with my right forefinger and the split instant his eyes trembled I ducked my left hand at the wrist and showed him my open palm and he was staring at an empty hand.
A real legerdemain artist is born, not made. Constant practice is vital, sure. But it doesn't add up to a good goddam if the sense of prestidigitation isn't inherent in the performer. The big trick is in directing the attention of your audience at the instant you substitute one thing for another. I had directed Cochrane's attention to my right hand when I shot the sinker down my left sleeve.
Cochrane was beaming like a kid. Funny thing about him-as old as he was and as long as he'd been around illusionists, he still got a kick out of that sort of thing.
"It's up your left sleeve, huh?" he said.
"Sure-it was," I said and I shot my left arm straight out at him and turned over my fist and opened it and it was still empty. He smiled and looked in my right hand and took back his paperweight.
"You've got the knack," he admitted, "but…" He thought about it for a bit. Then- "Here's a thought. You good at the shell game?"
I said I was and he said all right, he would put me in the carnival attraction with a stand and the shell game, to add to the atmosphere. Then he became serious.
"This ain't the old carny you and I knew," he warned me. "We don't pick the marks up by the heels and shake 'em till they're dry anymore. Times have changed."
"Yes they have," I said. "The shooting gallery op still keeps a sap under the counter and you still pay the law blind money to ignore the nautch girls."
He grinned. "You're guessing. Sure, we've got a lot of old time carnys working this lot, and they're as sharp as ever. But once you get around you'll notice we got highschool and college kids working here. Nice clean kids that keep the atmosphere homey."
He looked at me as if he were trying to see inside me, see what made me spin.
"I want it to stay that way, Thax." He meant it.
For a moment I felt an old familiar unease, and I wondered if he had heard about me. Then I figured probably not-otherwise he would want to kick it around before he hired me. There were some outfits up north that wouldn't touch me with an elephant gaff.
"Sure," I said. "I won't give you any grief."
I meant it. I liked him.
Then he named a price and I didn't think much of it and I gave one with a better name, which he countered, and I countered it, and we settled somewhere in between, and then he gave me a card that said I was employed by the Cochrane Enterprises.
"How's the grouch bag holding?" he asked.
"All right. I've got a few bucks."
Damn few. Five bucks was the truth. But I didn't want to start out by touching the boss.
"Got a place to sack?" he asked. "There's a bunkhouse around behind the Watusi Village. Some of the boys use it."
I knew those bunkhouses. They're used by the rummies who swamp up the lot and by the alky-paralyzed geek. Though this place wouldn't have one because there is nothing homey about a geek's atmosphere.
"I'll make out," I told him.
"All right, Thax. I'll have Gabby set you up a stand. Keep your nose clean."
"Like a whistle," I said. I really did like him.
It was dusk when I came out and Neverland was full of clamor. Cochrane's lot got a good play.
The place was laid out like a wagonwheel with a big garden in the hub. It had a fountain with colored lights and liquid music coming out of the water and that sort of thing.
The Coke and popcorn and ice-cream vendors wheeled their barrows up and down the flowered lanes and hawked their appeals to the common hunger and thirst of the citizenry. Little, overpainted, short-skirted highschool girls ran around in shrieking batches with armloads of kewpie dolls and peanuts and floss candy, and small gangs of pimply, shaggy-haired teenage boys prowled doggedly after them, laughing and smirking and desperately trying to show everyone just how goddam rough and manly they really were by yelling _Aw hell_ and _My ass_ in their pubertyshrill voices.