Red and Downing were waiting at the club entrance when he came out that night. The gambler was cynically amused by what had happened.
"Maybe we could go into partnership, Mitch. There ought to be big money in renting you Out as a chump."
"Now, you just stop that, Frank," Red scolded. "Mitch did exactly the right thing!"
"Did he? Then how come he's got that egg all over his face? So much that it even rubbed off on me."
"I'm sorry," Mitch said. "I hope I haven't spoiled anything for you, Frank."
Downing said that only time would tell about that. If the club had members who used six-four-eight dice, he wasn't sure that he wanted membership anyway.
Mitch declared that the man had been using them, all right. Downing shrugged, nodded.
"If you say so. He probably saw that big chump sign you're wearing."
Red punched the gambler on the arm. Mitch said, "All right, Frank, just what should I have done? What would you have done?"
"I'd have watched the dice awhile before I did any fading, if I'd been sap enough to buck a game like that in the first place."
"You mean I should have been looking for a cheat among those people?"
"Well, maybe not," Downing admitted. "But you should have kept your mouth shut after you got clipped. What did you expect this Johnny Birdwell to do?-confess that he was a mechanic? Did you think his friends were going to toss him over and side with you?"
Mitch couldn't argue the point. Obviously, in view of the way things had turned out, he had been wrong to holler. Along with the loss of his three grand, he had also lost the potentially lucrative opportunity to return to the club and had possibly gotten himself a powerful enemy.
"So okay, I'm a chump," he sighed. "What do I do about it?"
"Shoot yourself. What else?" Downing laughed and held out his hand. "Take it easy, you two. And come and see me whenever you're in Dallas."
He meant it. The gambler did not pretend friendliness when be felt unfriendly. So that at least, Mitch thought, was a break. To have had Downing sore at him on top of everything else- the shortage of money, the lack of immediate prospects-
Well, there was one prospect. Winfield Lord, Jr. And there was a way, seemingly, to collect on Lord's nominally worthless checks.
Mitch returned to bed, slightly cheered. But very slightly. A vague feeling of unease gnawed at him, a premonition that tonight's misadventure portended still further trouble. Zearsdale?-Well, just what could Zearsdale do, anyway? The oilman would find Mitch Corley's nose very, very clean. Much cleaner, doubtless, than that of the workaday citizen. The Mitch Corleys of the world could not afford the petty nastiness, the shady little deeds, which were generally shrugged off as the everybody-does-it-norm. They, the world's Corleys, shuddered at the notion of stealing towels from a hotel or betraying a confidence or making time with a friend's wife.
"There was always a risk in such shenanigans, and the professional gambler had enough risks as it was. Zearsdale, then, if he was inclined to make trouble, would have a hard time finding a vulnerable spot.
Of course, Mitch was vulnerable by the fact of being what he was. Of living as he and Red lived. So…
She rolled over in the bed, and put her arms around him. "Don't worry any more, darling," she whispered. "Everything will be all right."
"Of course it will." He patted the satiny plumpness of her bottom. "I'm sorry if I waked you up, honey."
"That's okay. Want me to give you something to make you Sleep?"
He did and she did, and it did. But the sleep seemed almost as brief as the treatment which brought it about. One minute he was dozing off, the next-or so it seemed-Red was shaking him, telling him that he would have to hurry because breakfast was already on the way up.
He arose promptly, and headed for the bathroom. Grumpily wondering why he had been called so early, but recognizing that Red would have had her reasons. Husband-like, he had learned long ago that if Red thought he should know something or remember something, it was best to pretend that he did; otherwise, he would find himself guilty of possibly the worst crime on the wifely calendar-ignorance of something of great importance to her, which should therefore be of equal importance to him.
He had shaved and was in the shower when Red poked her head in the door. Was he about ready? Breakfast had just arrived. He called that he'd be there in a shake, hoping she would jog his memory with a clue. When she didn't-hearing her reclose the bathroom door-he called to her again.
"Uh, about how much time have we got, honey?"
"Well… were we going to try to get there by noon?"
Get there? Get where?
"Whatever you think." He turned off the shower and began toweling himself. "Uh, where shall we eat lunch?"
"Well-Oh, I know! We'll take it with us. I'll have the dining room pack us a big hamper."
"Fine, oh, fine," Mitch said, desperately searching his memory.
"Maybe I should call ahead, too, huh? So we'll be expected."
"Uh, yes, you do that," Mitch said.
The door closed. He got out of the shower, and reached for his robe. And suddenly he remembered. Why, of course! They were driving up to his son's school today. This was the day they were seeing Sam, his son-and he had forgotten! Hurrying out of the bathroom to breakfast, Mitch felt a wrench of conscience. How bad off could a guy be, anyway, to forget a visit to his own son?
They had breakfast, and dressed. Mitch in tweeds and a dark sport shirt, Red in a fawn-colored travel suit with a head scarf of off- ivory silk. As they took the elevator downstairs, Mitch asked her to remind him that the quarterly payment on his income tax was about due. Red said she would do it, and that he was not to talk about anything unpleasant for the rest of the day.
Turkelson himself was at their car, supervising the tuckingin of a Thermos-type hamper. Mitch addressed him as boy, and handed him a dime tip. The manager accepted it with as much bowing as his portliness would permit, then exploded into laughter as they drove away.
It took them perhaps an hour to get out of Houston and the city's heavy traffic. Then, having reached the highway, he settled the Jag down to a more-or-less steady seventy miles an hour. It was a warm day, but a little cool in the swiftly moving car. Red moved close to Mitch, her small shoulder pressing against his. Glancing up into the car's mirror, he surprised her in a look of such love and devotion that a quick lump came into his throat.
"Mitch," she said softly. "You're the dearest, darlingest, nicest man that ever lived."
"What took you so long to catch on?" Mitch grinned.
"I've known it right from the beginning. Sometimes I forget, I guess, and then something happens like this morning- You'd forgotten about coming to see Sam, hadn't you?"
Mitch nodded guiltily. "I should have had my ass kicked."
"You were a darling," Red insisted. "You pretended to remember because I expected you to. To keep me from being hurt or disappointed in you."
Mitch said that that was the way he was-perfect. The thought, not highly original, flicked through his mind that the more different women were, the more they were the same. How many times, for example, had Teddy and his mother and Red done just about the exact opposite of what he had expected them to do? Teddy would smile at him when he expected a slap. His mother would slap him when logic prophesied a smile. Red-well, Red had just rewarded forgetfulness with tenderness. As proof of her love for him. All this was not to say, of course, that a woman would always do the thing contrary to a man's expectations. No, a woman was not going to be as easily understood as that! The subtle kinship which united her with her sex had a sweetly mythic as well as a contradictory quality. About her was the kind of wide-eyed, innocent, infuriating, deliciously irrelevant relevance that associated Easter bunnies with painted hen's eggs.