“We’re both pretty.”
“You can sure as hell take a few punches, Johnny.”
“I should have been a boxer.”
“Yeah. Both of us. I can’t find my cigarettes.”
I dug out a pair of mine and gave him one. We chucked our dirty clothes in the corner and went out to the car. He headed north, drove slowly.
“It was a good idea, stopping here,” he said after a while. “I was aching for a crack at you ever since Toronto.”
“Well, we worked it out.”
“We did at that,” he said.
I smoked my cigarette all the way down and flipped the butt out the window. I asked him what he figured on doing next.
“I suppose I’ll head for Vegas,” he said.
“To give the money back across the tables?”
“Part of it. Or I’ll beat them for a change. I like it out there. Get some sun, lie around the pool, get a little drunk, rest up while I figure out how to connect for the next one.”
“Sure.”
“I guess I’ll drive. I lucked out on the car, bought the first one off the lot and it doesn’t ride bad at all. I figure I can drive it to Vegas with no trouble.”
“You’ll want a new name.”
“Well, that’s no headache, Johnny. Pick a new name and sell it to myself and then register it in Nevada with Nevada plates. I’ll probably put it in my own name, I don’t know. Maybe not.” He was silent a moment. “I have to pass through Colorado, I guess. Or close enough to it. If you feel like riding along, feel free.”
I didn’t answer him right away. I thought about a lot of things, added them up and checked the addition.
“Maybe I’ll ride on through with you,” I said. “I could use a vacation. I don’t even remember what Vegas looks like.”
He looked at me.
“I don’t gamble much,” I went on. “But the sunshine sounds good, and all the rest.”
“I figured you were anxious to get back to your town.”
“Well,” I said.
“And you’ll be tight enough on money. You wouldn’t want to blow some of it in Vegas. Even without gambling—”
I lit another cigarette. I thought that it was funny how a couple of days took the prison fever right out of a man. Running the risks and being utterly in tune and getting everything right and beating the system did wonders for you. Lost confidence came back. You found out, once again, just who you happened to be.
“I’ll just take things easy in Vegas,” I said finally. The words came easy now. “And we’ll both of us keep our eyes open, you and I, and when the right proposition comes along we’ll be ready for it. Next time we’ll play it straight. We’ve got enough troubles without conning each other.”
“You—” He stopped, started over. “You want to work with me again?”
“Why not? We’re a good match for each other. We work damned well together. We already proved that much.”
“But—”
“We both made mistakes we won’t make again. They don’t change the fact that we make a good team.”
He drove a mile or two in silence. “That roadhouse in Colorado,” he said.
“What about it?”
“You figure you need one more score to afford it?”
It would have been easy to say yes, sure, that was it. But it wasn’t, and I was not about to say so. So I thought for a minute or two, and I pictured myself standing behind a bar wiping glasses, or sitting in an office keeping careful records for the tax beagles, or figuring interest rates and depreciation schedules and breakage allowances. I thought about the last few days and I thought too about the weeks before them. The tension, the feeling of running wide open with the gears meshing and all the machinery perfectly aligned. I thought about The Dream, and I thought about The Girl, and about all dreams and all girls. No dreams come true, I guess, and no girls are as perfect as the heart would have them.
And beyond all that, I thought that a man must be what he is and do what he is geared to do. He cannot permit himself to be conned out of what he truly is. Not by the scare of a prison cell. Not by the smell of a woman, or the teasing song of a dream.
So I told Doug this, or most of it, and maybe he understood, and maybe he did not. At least I did. He pulled out to pass another car and put the gas pedal down on the floor. The sun was about gone but we were heading toward where it had disappeared from sight. West, toward Las Vegas.