Well, that's the number I'd tipped them to, but she called it before the dice stopped rolling. That left me thirteen chips. Half absent-mindedly, I put three of them on the "Pass" side of the line and tipped the dice to twelve. Mostly I was looking at this scarecrow beside me.
"Box cars!" one of the dealers called. "My future home." But he wasn't as quick as Sniffles. She had called the turn before the galloping dominoes had bounced from the backrail.
The box cars cost me the dice. The next gambler blew on them, cursed, and rolled. I didn't bet, and spent the next couple rolls looking at her.
The girl was a mess. Some women have no style because they don't even know what it means. Courturiers have taught them all to be lean and hungry-looking. This chicken was underfed in a way that wasn't stylish. They call it malnutrition. Her strapless gown didn't fit her, nor anybody within twenty pounds of her weight. She was all shoulder blades and collarbones. I suppose that a decent walk would have given her some charm—most of these hustlers have a regular Swiss Movement. But this thing had a gait that tied in with the slack way her skirt hung across her pelvic bones and hollered "White Trash!" at you.
I wasn't much flattered that she had tried to pick me up. People have a pretty accurate way of measuring their social station. And she thought she was what I'd go for. Well, I guess I don't look like so much, either. I'd missed my share of meals when they might have put some height on me. My long, freckled face ends in a chin as sharp and pointed as her nose. And there's always something about a cripple, even if my powerless right arm doesn't exactly show.
My days on the Crap Patrol came back to me. That's where the Lodge had found me, down on my knees in an alley, making the spots come up my way without even knowing I could do it. And when they'd convinced me I was really a TK, and started me on the training that finally led to the Thirty-third degree, they'd put me right back in those alleys, and cheap hotel rooms, watching for some other unknowing TK tipping the dice his way.
Did Sniffles have it? She wasn't tipping dice, exactly, but she sure was calling the turn. She was tall, as well as skinny, and our eyes weren't far apart. "Billy Joe," she whispered above the racket of the gambler in the casino, putting her mouth close to my ear. "I told you, sugar. And now you lost. You lost!" Her perfume was cheap, but generous, and pretty well covered up her need for a bath.
"There's some left," I told her. "Show me how." She hugged my arm to her skinniness. That's all any of the hustlers ever want—to get their hands on your chips. They figure some of them will stick to their fingers.
The gambler next to me had won a dollar bet without my help. He acted mighty glad for a win—maybe it was a while since he'd hit it. I decided to give him a run of luck.