He would only use the money he had in his pocket.
Promise.
But soon the two twenties he’d slipped from Barb’s wallet were gone. Then all of his pocket change. He had to amend the rules. Just this once.
At the check-cashing booth, he slapped down his last piece of plastic, a MasterCard to which he’d transferred all his other balances; 5.9 percent APR, no finance charge for twelve months.
The circuits rejected $100.
“Fifty,” he told the bored clerk. Fifty also drew a pass.
Probably the clip of the service charge exceeded his credit limit.
“Forty.” Forty went through.
With two more twenties he returned to his machine, fed an Andy Jackson into the slot. Eighty credits electronically clicked up on the screen. Coolly, after toying with him, the machine gulped down the eighty. His hand shook, sweaty, as he tendered the second bill into the electronic maw.
An ascending stream of chimes erupted in back of him.
Big winner. Coins steadily clinked, little silver hammers striking base metal. Other people were winning.
My turn, dammit.
Like mockery, from across the vast room a PA voice com-plimented Tony Lofas of Grand Forks, who had won twenty-three hundred dollars on Dollar Double Diamond.
The drum in front of him cocked and spun and cocked and spun and nothing matched up. Change the pattern. He cashed in his few remaining credits so he could feed the coins manually into the slot on every play. Soon his stake had shrunk to a pile he could hold in the palm of his hand.
More slowly, the quarters dropped down the cool steel gullet.
Grimly, he plugged in three of his dwindling quarters, selected the center line and spun the drum.
The clamor, the cheap electronic champagne bubbles, the needy human press all around, receded. Tom was alone, locked in the slot.
Three swords in a row.
A trumpet fanfare. A new display magically swam up from the electronic alchemy. A forest grotto. Two princes stood on either side of a sword plunged to the hilt in a huge rock.
The prince on the right was short and dark, with a sinister, spaded black beard and red and black livery. Tom favored the younger man on the left, who was blond, broad-shouldered, and clean-shaven. Like he might look if he got in shape. Tom even had a lucky nickname for Mr. Left. The pillow talk nickname Ida whispered in the dark.
“C’mon, Danny,” he chanted under his breath as he keyed the left button.
The blond prince reached forward, and for a beat, his hand paused on the hilt. Then, effortlessly, with a smooth confident kingly sweep of his arm, he drew the sword from the stone and held it triumphantly over his head to a cloudburst of special effects.
Thunder pealed, lightning bolts electrified the display. The boulder pulsed red as a living heart. A crown appeared on the winner’s head. A regal purple robe draped his shoulders.
Sparkles of anointing energy closed the circuit between Tom’s rapt face and the screen.
A scroll above the stone announced You WIN 1000.
Only quarters, not dollars. But it was a jackpot. Someday he’d have this feeling in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. And it would be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.
“Yes!” affirmed Tom James. He punched the cash-out button and listened to the abundant shower of falling silver.
8
All of his adult life, Broker despised and avoided working routines. Most of his sixteen years as a cop he’d spent undercover, preferring the solitary risks over paperwork and a predictable schedule.
Lone wolf, they called him. Misfit.
As he removed gobs of clean baby clothes from the drier and stuffed them into a plastic hamper, he mused that his life resembled the baby socks he held in his hand: turned inside out.
Patiently, he hauled the basket into the kitchen, wiped down the table and began to fold the clothes. His muscular hands were thick-veined, knuckle prominent, turned on a lathe of heavy labor. Of physical shock. They dipped into the laundry basket like the jaws of a steam shovel, extracted a tiny white Onesie undergarment and gently smoothed it on the table.
Old habits from the army; get out the wrinkles, make uniform folds. Precise little stacks. Socks, sleepers, Onesies, miniature pastel T-shirts: all lined up like a toy vision of peace.
Friends urged him to take on a housekeeper/nanny when his folks went on vacation. But he insisted on doing all the cooking and cleaning himself. After two weeks solo in babyland he was amazed at the sheer volume of work his sixty-five-year-old mother had put into taking care of Kit.
Going on week four, he began to accumulate low-grade resentments. Every itty-bitty sock he turned into its mate was another tiny contention against Nina, who had left him alone with a child.
Because she insisted on pursuing her career.
Soon he’d have to build a whole new wall of shelves to house his hoarded arguments. Petty. Broker caught himself.
Like his curiosity about Caren’s odd phone message. Keith was in trouble. Well-good.
He did not take malicious pleasure in others’ troubles; but Broker was not surprised that Keith Angland had stepped into it. News traveled the cop grapevine.
Keith’s famous control-freak thermostat went haywire after he was passed over for the second time on the promotion exam for captain. His sour grapes took the form of racial slurs hurled at the new police chief.
So Broker could imagine the depth of Caren’s agony; Keith had become a loose cannon. Probably the mayor had ex-punged them from his Christmas party short list.
Still, he was curious. And she had sounded overwrought on the phone message. Too embarrassed, maybe, to talk to her circle of friends, most of whom were police wives.
So call good-old, regular baby-changing Broker in his new life up in the north woods. Broker, never a womanizer, was too steady and old to draw any romantic inferences from the call. She probably wanted him to lobby old colleagues on Keith’s behalf.
Of course, he decided not to pursue it-but-if she called again and actually spoke to him, he would give a good listen.
It was just that he had trouble taking Caren seriously after she married an ambition-driven bastard like Angland.
He folded a pink T-shirt with Pooh Bear on it and placed it on top of the T-shirt stack. With his palms, he plumped the edges of the shirts so they made an even line.
As he reached for a Polarfleece jumper, he did admit to a small amount of satisfaction that Caren would turn to him.
Vindication, maybe.
In the middle of this thought, the phone rang. He reached over, plucked it off the wall mount, and when no one said anything for the first few seconds, he thought, uh-huh, her again, working up the spit to finally make actual contact.
And he said, “Is that you, Caren?”
The silence stretched out a few more seconds and then a clear chiseled voice, pitched between surprise, pique and command assurance, stated with great emphasis: “What?”
The connection from Tuzla was like right next door.
“Jesus, Nina?” he blurted.
“Check me if I’m wrong, but you did say Caren-as in wife number one?”
Broker’s explanation sounded lame. All true, honest, but lame. “That’s right. She called and left a message on the machine. I thought you were her calling again.”
“Hmmm,” observed Nina eloquently.
“Yes, I agree,” said Broker. Then he waited to see if she would take it further. When she didn’t, he asked, “How are you?”
“Fair. How’s baby?”
“Every day she looks more and more like Winston Churchill.”
“I miss that fat little kid, I really do.”