Second Game
“I eased myself into a seat behind the play board, straightened the pitchman's cloak about my shoulders, took a final deep breath, let it out—and waited.
A nearby Fair visitor glanced at the sign as he hurried by. His eyes widened with anticipated pleasure and he shifted his gaze to me, weighing me with the glance. I knew I had him.
The man changed direction and came over to where I sat. "Are you giving any odds?" he asked.
"Ten to one," I answered.
"A dronker." He wrote on a blue slip with a white stylus, dropped it at my elbow, and sat down.
"We play the first game for feel," I said. "Second game pays." Gradually I let my body relax. Its weight pulled at the muscles of my back and shoulders, and I slouched into a half-slump. I could feel my eyelids droop as I released them, and the corners of my mouth pulled down. I probably appeared tired and melancholy. Or like a man operating in a gravity heavier than was normal for him. Which I was.
I had come to this world called Velda two weeks earlier.
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