He looked as if he were going to snatch the bill right out of my hand, he was so eager.
"All right, Ted, I realize there are expenses. Thirty-five."
We compromised on forty.
"But I want a promise," he said emphatically. "I'm to be the only one you sell these bills to!"
"You reach me, o-uncle." I handed him the bills. "You're deep, man. Real deep!"
Real deep in the hole, that is—he mortgaged his house and his regular inventory to buy up all the money I began taking in. Once we redeemed the wedding ring and all the other articles, I got to feeling mellow and even a bit grateful. He'd started me in business, so to speak. I couldn't stick him with all those millions that would just about buy him a helicab ride to the poorhouse in 1988.
So when Marilyn and I got just as deep in the black, because the Society members gave us some books on stock-market statistics, I started giving Uncle tips every now and then. Not free, of course—I asked for half and we settled on seventy-thirty. With that plus the ones I bought, both for now and the long pull, I guess we're the only people living today who can be sure of having a second honeymoon on Mars, although Solid Chuck Richards tells me he hears Mars is overrated, there not being a juke on the whole planet, and even if there were you couldn't jump to any decent kind of beat in that low gravity.
I wouldn't say so to Solid Chuck Richards, but that sounds like absolute zero to me.