about.”
“I’m sure you haven’t.”
“You’ve got to stop reading The National Enquirer. This is a legally run business. I’m merely asking a favor.”
“Okay, Mr. Hartshorn, I’ve been three days without any sleep. Ten hours will do me a world of good.”
“I’ll have the desk clerk find you a quiet room on the top floor. And thank you, Mr. Kostner.”
“Think nothing of it. “
“I’m afraid that will be impossible.”
“A lot of impossible things are happening lately.”
He turned to go, as Hartshorn lit a cigarette.
“Oh, by the way, Mr. Kostner?”
Kostner stopped and half-turned. “Yes?”
His eyes were getting difficult to focus. There was a ringing in his ears. Hartshorn seemed to waver at the edge of his vision like heat lightning across a prairie. Like memories of things Kostner had come across the country to forget. Like the whimpering and pleading that kept tugging at the cells of his brain. The voice of Maggie. Still back in there, saying…things…
They’ll try to keep you from me.
All he could think about was the ten hours of sleep he had been promised. Suddenly it was more important than the money, than forgetting, than anything. Hartshorn was talking, was saying things, but Kostner could not hear him. It was as if he had turned off the sound and saw only the silent rubbery movement of Hartshorn’s lips. He shook his head trying to clear it.
There were half a dozen Hartshorns all melting into and out of one another. And the voice of Maggie.
I’m warm here, and alone. I could be good to you, if you can come to me. Please come, please hurry.
“Mr. Kostner?”
Hartshorn’s voice came draining down through exhaustion as thick as velvet flocking. Kostner tried to focus again. His extremely weary brown eyes began to track.
“Did you know about that slot machine?” Hartshorn was saying. “A peculiar thing happened with it about six weeks ago.”
“What was that?”
“A girl died playing it. She had a heart attack, a seizure while she was pulling the handle, and died right out there on the floor.”
Kostner was silent for a moment. He wanted desperately to ask Hartshorn what color the dead girl’s eyes had been, but he was afraid the owner would say blue.
He paused with his hand on the office door. “Seems as though you’ve had nothing but a streak of bad luck on that machine.”
Hartshorn smiled an enigmatic smile. “It might not change for a while, either.”
Kostner felt his jaw muscles tighten. “Meaning I might die, too, and wouldn’t that be bad luck.”
Hartshorn’s smile became hieroglyphic, permanent, stamped on him forever. “Sleep tight, Mr. Kostner.”
In a dream, she came to him. Long, smooth thighs and soft golden down on her arms,. blue eyes deep as the past, misted with a fine scintillance like lavender spiderwebs; taut body that was the only body Woman had ever had, from the very first. Maggie came to him.
Hello, I’ve been traveling a long time.
“Who are you?” Kostner asked, wonderingly. He was standing on a chilly plain, or was it a plateau? The wind curled around them both, or was it only around him? She was exquisite, and he saw her clearly, or was it through a mist? Her voice was deep and resonant, or was it light and warm as night-blooming jasmine?
I’m Maggie. I love you. I’ve waited for you.
“You have blue eyes.“
Yes. With love.
“You’re very beautiful.“
Thank you. With female amusement.
“But why me? Why let it happen to me? Are you the girl who—are you the one that was sick— the one who—?”
I’m Maggie. And you, I picked you, because you need me. You’ve needed someone for a long long time.
Then it unrolled for Kostner. The past unrolled and he saw who he was. He saw himself alone. Always alone. As a child, born to kind and warm parents who hadn’t the vaguest notion of who he was, what he wanted to be, where his talents lay. So he had run off, when he was in his teens, and alone always alone on the road. For years and months and days and hours, with no one. Casual friendships, based on food, or sex, or artificial similarities. But no one to whom he could cleave, and cling, and belong. It was that way till Susie, and with her he had found light. He had discovered the scents and aromas of a spring that was eternally one day away. He had laughed, really laughed, and known with her it would at last be all right. So he had poured all of himself into her, giving her everything; all his hopes, his secret thoughts, his tender dreams; and she had taken them, taken him, all of him, and he had known for the first time what it was to have a place to live, to have a home in someone’s heart. It was all the silly and gentle things he laughed at in other people, but for him it was breathing deeply of wonder.
He had stayed with her for a long time, and had supported her, supported her son from the first marriage,. the marriage Susie never talked about. And then one day, he had come back, as Susie had always known he would. He was a dark creature of ruthless habits and vicious nature, but she had been his woman, all along, and Kostner realized he had been used as a stop-gap, as a bill-payer till her wandering terror came home to nest. Then she had asked him to leave. Broke, and tapped out in all the silent inner ways a man can be drained, he had left, without even a fight, for all the fight had been leached out of him He had left, and wandered west, and finally come to Las Vegas, where he had hit bottom. And found Maggie. In a dream, with blue eyes, he had found Maggie.
I want you to belong to me. I love you. Her truth was vibrant in Kostner’s mind. She was his, at last someone who was special. was his.
“Can I trust you? I’ve never been able to trust anyone before. Women, never. But I need someone. I really need someone. “
It’s me, always. Forever. You can trust me.
And she came to him, fully. Her body was a declaration of truth and trust such as no other Kostner had ever known before. She met him on a windswept plain of thought, and he made love to her more completely than he had known any passion before. She joined with him, entered him, mingled with his blood and his thought and his frustration, and he came away clean, filled with glory.
“Yes. I can trust you. I want you. I’m yours.“ he whispered to her, when they lay side by side in a dream nowhere of mist and soundlessness. “I’m yours. “
She smiled, a woman ‘s smile of belief in her man; a smile of trust and deliverance. And Kostner woke up.
The Chief was back on its stand. and the crowd had been penned back by velvet ropes. Several people had played the machine, but there had been no jackpots.
Now Kostner came into the casino, and the “spotters” got themselves ready. While Kostner had slept, they had gone through his clothes, searching for wires, for gaffs, for spoons or boomerangs. Nothing.
Now he walked straight to the Chief. and stared at it.
Hartshorn was there. “You look tired,” he said gently to Kostner, studying the man’s weary brown eyes.
“I am, a little.” Kostner tried a smile; it didn’t work. “I had a funny dream.”
