"That crack isn't considered very funny in Texas," I growled.
"Is it any more silly for me to think you might be a psi personality than for you to think you never lose at cards?" she nailed me.
I could feel my face getting red. "Damn it!" I started. "Nobody talks to a friend like that!"
"Pretty convincing proof!" Shari said tartly.
"Of what?"
"Of the fact that you aren't making any sense about this gambling kick you're on, Tex. You should have laughed my teasing off. Who would seriously suggest that you were a psi personality?" she demanded. "And most of all, with my background in psi, do you think I could be misled about it?"
I shrugged, trying to cool down. Shari's doctorate had been earned with a startling thesis on psi phenomena and psi personalities, and she had stayed on at Columbia as a research fellow in the field. In egghead circles, she rated as a psi expert, all right.
"Guess not," I said, trying to kill the subject.
She wasn't going to let it die. "I don't think you're a psi, Tex. You're a Normal!" The way she said it, it didn't sound like a compliment. "Worse than that," she insisted. "You're beginning to act like a compulsive gambler." She took a deep breath, and let me have the clincher: "I could never marry a gambler, Tex!"
"You've never been asked," I reminded her.