“Okay, kid.” He picked up the phone with no further argument and called his cab. She closed her eyes, lulled and comforted by the sound of his voice. One of the things she liked most about him was that he would always really try to do the right thing, the best thing, with no self-serving bullshit. That was good. She was too tired and feeling too low to play little social games.
“The deed’s done,” he said, hanging up. “They’ll have a guy over in five minutes.”
“At least you’ve got cab fare,” she said, smiling.
“And I plan to tip handsomely,” he replied, doing a passable W. C. Fields.
He came over to the couch, sat beside her, held her hand.
“Johnny, how did you do it?”
“Hmmm?”
“The Wheel. How could you do that?”
“It was a streak, that’s all,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable. “Everybody has a streak once in a while. Like at the racetrack or playing blackjack or just matching dimes.”
“No,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I don’t think everybody does have a streak once in a while. It was almost uncanny. It ... scared me a little.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
Johnny sighed. “Once in a while I get feelings, that’s all. For as long as I can remember, since I was just a little kid. And I’ve always been good at finding things people have lost. Like that little Lisa Schumann at school. You know the girl I mean?”
“Little, sad, mousy Lisa?” She smiled. “I know her. She’s wandering in clouds of perplexity through my business grammar course.”
“She lost her class ring,” Johnny said, “and came to me in tears about it. I asked her if she’d checked the back comers of the top shelf in her locker. Just a guess. But it was there.”
“And you’ve always been able to do that?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Hardly ever.” The smile slipped a little. “But it was strong tonight, Sarah. I had that Wheel ...” He closed his fists softly and looked at them, now frowning. “I had it right here. And it had the strangest goddam associations for me.”
“Like what?”
“Rubber,” he said slowly. “Burning rubber. And cold. And ice. Black ice. Those things were in the back of my mind. God knows why. And a bad feeling. Like to beware.”
She looked at him closely, saying nothing, and his face slowly cleared.
“But it’s gone now, whatever it was. Nothing probably.”
“It was five hundred dollars worth of good luck, anyway,” she said. Johnny laughed and nodded. He didn’t talk anymore and she drowsed, glad to have him there. She came back to wakefulness when headlights from outside splashed across the wall. His cab.
“I’ll call,” he said, and kissed her face gently. “You sure you don’t want me to hang around?”
Suddenly she did, but she shook her head.
“Call me,” she said.
“Period three,” he promised. He went to the door.
“Johnny?”
He turned back.
“I love you, Johnny,” she said, and his face lit up like a lamp.
He blew a kiss. “Feel better,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”
She nodded, but it was four-and-a-half years before she talked to Johnny Smith again.
2
“Do you mind if I sit up front?” Johnny asked the cab driver.
“Nope. Just don’t bump your knee on the meter. It’s delicate.”
Johnny slid his long legs under the meter with some effort and slammed the door. The cabbie, a middle-aged man with a bald head and a paunch, dropped his flag and the cab cruised up Flagg Street.
“Where to?”
“Cleaves Mills,” Johnny said. “Main Street. I’ll show you where.”
“I got to ask you for fare-and-a-half,” the cabbie said. “I don’t like to, but I got to come back empty from there.”
Johnny’s hand closed absently over the lump of bills in his pants pocket. He tried to remember if he had ever had so much money on him at one time before. Once. He had bought a two-year-old Chevy for twelve hundred dollars. On a whim, he had asked for cash at the savings bank, just to see what all that cash looked like. It hadn’t been all that wonderful, but the surprise on the car dealer’s face when Johnny pumped twelve one-hundred-dollar bills into his hand had been wonderful to behold. But this lump of money didn’t make him feel good at all, just vaguely uncomfortable, and his mother’s axiom recurred to him: Found money brings bad luck.
“Fare-and-a-half’s okay,” he told the cabbie.
“Just as long’s we understand each other,” the cabbie said more expansively. “I got over so quick on account of I had a call