Last Call (Last Call 1)

Mavranos felt an echo of the words in his own chest and realized that his vocal cords were helplessly working in sync with Snayheever's; and he'd heard Pogue barking out the words, too; and Mavranos's vision darkened as if at the suggestion of the words.

"Blind as a bat!" Snayheever boomed again. "Can't fly with no hat, simple as that!"—and the chorusing volume of his voice was for Mavranos the worst thing about this whole top-of-the-world scene, as his own lungs ached with the stress of matching Snayheever's bellowing.

Mavranos found that he had sat down on the curb, the cold gun butt jabbing into his ribs. People were getting out of their cars now, not even bothering to turn off the engines or put the gearshifts into park, to flee this terribly amplified voice that had burst out of their own throats; abandoned cars rolled forward into the bumpers of others and, to judge by the screams, crushed the legs of a few suggestion-blinded pedestrians.

Pogue was yelling now, though his voice sounded squeaky and shallow after Snayheever's. "I've got to get my head into the water," Pogue screamed. "An imperfect King's head! I've got to stop the action!" He seemed to be addressing no one but himself, trying to order Snayheever's forcefully obscuring nonsense out of his head. "As soon as the fucking blood stops boiling away!" He was shaking his hand furiously, and gusts of steam whirled up around him.

Snayheever led Mavranos and Pogue in a dizzying hum.

"How you say," Snayheever went on, "feet like Antaeus can't get off the pavement no way you can climb over and fly down to the water."

Mavranos remembered how Snayheever's voice had come booming out of blind Spider Joe in the living room of that dusty trailer, and how compelling the imposed madness had been, and he realized that Snayheever was keeping Pogue from jumping.

Good, Mavranos thought. Better you than me, Dondi. He sighed deeply against the jabbing resistance of the revolver and dared hope that he might not have to use it.

He looked up when he heard a clatter and scuffling. Pogue had reeled away from the coping and stumbled off the curb, apparently blind but lurching toward Snayheever's voice.

And behind and above him the vault of the blue sky was stippled with fluttering spots of darkness.

Noon was not far gone, but the sky was full of bats.

The houseboat seemed to be listing, and the tired players leaned more often counterclockwise than not in their chairs, as though the boat were spinning in some unphysical clockwise whirlpool.

So far the pattern of cards that lay on the table had not yet deviated from the one that Crane had set up.

All the hands except for Crane's and Leon's and one other man's had been mated, had been conceived, and now Leon's hand was finally up for auction.

"Mr. Hanari's hand is up for bid," Crane said hoarsely, "and the dealer will presume to make the first bid of five hundred and fifty dollars." It was how much Leon had put into this pot so far.

"I'll go six," said the pale young man whose hand was the other still-unmated one, but he seemed to be speaking automatically, with no eagerness. Since the incomprehensible syllables of the great voice had come booming across the lake like some lament from distantly shifting rock strata, the boat had seemed smaller, and the players had been stating their checks and calls and raises and passes more often with gestures than with statements, as if fearful of being overheard by something in the lake or in the sky.

Leon was pale. His hands were trembling, but he gripped the cards as if they were a lifeline and he were drowning.

The hot breeze through the ports was cold on Crane's sweaty forehead, and he remotely wondered what his mascara must look like. "Seven," he said stolidly.

Doctor Leaky was not speaking anymore, but shifted furiously in his fouled clothes against the restraint of the safety belt.

"Yours," said the pale young man, pushing his chair back from the table and getting up to go to the bar.

Leon flipped up the Six and Eight of Cups next to his showing Knight of Sticks and Seven of Swords and pushed the four cards over to Crane.

"Deliver our child healthy, Mother," said Leon as he, too, stood up and reeled away across the tilted red carpet, toward the wheelchair-bound figure of Doctor Leaky. Leon could be heard muttering in an urgently soothing tone to the very old man.

Crane hoped he would be able to deliver the healthy child in question. Two of the players had bought the wrong hands, and now one of them, Crane knew, held an Ace-high Flush in Coins, which would beat Crane's own King-high Flush in Swords if they both stayed in to the showdown.

Crane pointed at that player, who was showing two Aces. "Aces are the power," Crane said flatly.