“Sure, a check,” Steve Bernhardt said with infinite contempt. “He’ll give you a check that’ll bounce as high as the WGAN Tall Tower and he’ll be down in Florida for the winter.”
“My dear sir,” the pitchman began, “I assure you ...”
“Oh, go assure your mother, maybe she’ll believe you,” Bernhardt said. He suddenly reached over the playing board and groped beneath the counter.
“Hey!” The pitchman yelped. “This is robbery!”
The crowd did not appear impressed with his claim.
“Please,” Sarah muttered. Her head was whirling.
“I don’t care about the money,” Johnny said suddenly. “Let us by, please. The lady’s sick.”
“Oh, man,” the teenager with the Jimi Hendrix button said, but he and his buddy drew reluctantly aside.
“No, Johnny,” Sarah said, although she was only holding back from vomiting by an act of will now. “Get your money.” Five hundred dollars was Johnny’s salary for three weeks.
“Pay off, you cheap tinhorn!” Bernhardt roared. He brought up the Roi-Tan cigar box from under the counter, pushed it aside without even looking inside it, groped again, and this time came up with a steel lockbox painted industrial green. He slammed it down on the play-board. “If there ain’t five hundred and forty bucks in there, I’ll eat my own shirt in front of all these people.” He dropped a hard, heavy hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “You just wait a minute, sonny. You’re gonna have your payday or my name’s not Steve Bernhardt.”
“Really, sir, I don’t have that much ...”
“You pay,” Steve Bernhardt said, leaning over him, “or I’ll see you shut down. I mean that. I’m sincere about it.”
The pitchman sighed and fished inside his shirt. He produced a key on a fine-link chain. The crowd sighed. Sarah could stay no longer. Her stomach felt bloated and suddenly as still as death. Everything was going to come up, everything, and at express-train speed. She stumbled away from Johnny’s side and battered through the crowd.
“Honey, you all right?” a woman’s voice asked her, and Sarah shook her head blindly.
“Sarah? Sarah!”
You just can’t hide ... from Jekyll and Hyde, she thought incoherently. The fluorescent mask seemed to hang sickly before her eyes in the midway dark as she hurried past the merry-go-round. She struck a light pole with her shoulder, staggered, grabbed it, and threw up. It seemed to come all the way from her heels, convulsing her stomach like a sick, slick fist. She let herself go with it as much as she could.
Smells like cotton candy, she thought, and with a groan she did it again, then again. Spots danced in front of her eyes. The last heave had brought up little more than mucus and air.
“Oh, my,” she said weakly, and clung to the light pole to keep from falling over. Somewhere behind her Johnny was calling her name, but she couldn’t answer just yet, didn’t want to. Her stomach was settling back down a little and for just a moment she wanted to stand here in the dark and congratulate herself on being alive, on having survived her night at the fair.
“Sarah? Sarah!”
She spat twice to clear her mouth a little.
“Over here, Johnny.”
He came around the carousel with its plaster horses frozen in midleap. She saw he was absently clutching a thick wad of greenbacks in one hand.
“Are you all right?”
“No, but better. I threw up.”
“Oh. Oh, Jesus. Let’s go home.” He took her arm gently.
“You got your money.”
He glanced down at the wad of bills and then tucked it absently into his pants pocket. “Yeah. Some of it or all of it, I don’t know. That burly guy counted it out.”
Sarah took a handkerchief from her purse and began rubbing her mouth with it. Drink of water, she thought. I’d sell my soul for a drink of water.
“You ought to care,” she said. “It’s a lot of money.”
“Found money brings bad luck,” he said darkly. “One of my mother’s sayings. She had a million of em. And she’s death on gambling.”
“Dyed-in-the-wool Baptist,” Sarah said, and then shuddered convulsively.
“You okay?” he asked, concerned.
“The chills,” she said. “When we get in the car I want the heater on full blast, and ... oh, Lord, I’m going to do it again.”
She turned away from him and retched up spittle with a groaning sound. She staggered. He held her gently but firmly.
“Can you get back to the car?”
“Yes. I’m all right now.” But her head ached and her mouth tasted foul and the muscles of her back and belly all