Joe winced.
I turned up my hole ace and said, "Give me a sixth, you poor son. I can't lose."
A nine.
"Nineteen in six," I crowed. I counted up my bets: five dollars. "You owe me fifteen bucks!"
Then I looked up at him.
I'll repeat myself. You know that hot flush of pure delight, of high triumph, even of mild avarice that possesses you from tingling scalp to tingling toe when you've pulled off a doozy? If you play cards, you've been there. If you don't play cards, just think back to the last time someone complimented the pants off you, or the last time you clinched a big deal, or the last time a sweet kid you'd been hot after said, "Yes."
That's the feeling I mean ... the feeling I had.
And Joe Arnold was eating it.
I knew it, somehow, the moment I saw his eyes and hands. His eyes weren't Joe Arnold's blue eyes any longer. They were wet balls of shining black that took up half his face, and they looked hungry. His arms were straight out in front of him; his hands were splayed tensely about a foot from my face. The fingers were thinner and much longer than I could recall Joe's being, and they just looked like antennae or electrodes or something, stretched wide-open that way and quivering, and I just knew that they were picking up and draining off into Joe's body all the elation, the excitement, the warmth that I felt.
I looked at him and wondered why I couldn't scream or move a muscle.