"Dorr, James S - The Winning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dorr James S)

THE WINNING
By
James S. Dorr

He cashed his tickets in at the window and stuffed the money into his jeans. A _lot_ of money. He smiled at the cashier, a pretty woman perhaps in her early thirties, then elbowed his way through the milling crowd. He left the racetrack and thought for a moment of taking a bus home. He thought of pulling the bills from his pocket, peeling one off to give to the driver, then decided he might as well walk.

He was used to walking.

He thought of stopping in at a restaurant, then decided he wasn't hungry. Time enough to eat in his apartment. He had to make plans.

He thought of the cashier, a curly-haired blonde who had smiled back at him, a little like Betty. "You take care," she'd told him. He'd nodded back.

He thought about Betty.

God he missed Betty. She'd died just a few years after their marriage and that's when he'd started to go downhill. Drinking. Loss of his job. Other jobs. He was over the drinking now, at least, but not the bad luck that had dogged his footsteps. Until that morning.

That's when he'd found the ten dollar bill crumpled in the gutter. He'd picked it up, smoothed it out in his hands, and thought, "Why not?"

He'd gone to the racetrack, an institution that, like him, had seen better days. Factories had grown up around it, then fallen into disuse. Slums had followed. Tenement neighborhoods, scarcely better, even when new, than the one he lived in across the river. But he had become used to living in slums.

He'd started out small -- he had only ten dollars -- placing his bets at the two dollar window. But one had won for him. He graduated to ten dollar bets as the afternoon wore on, then finally, in a fit of bravado, chose a horse whose name he liked and put all he had to win at a hundred dollar window.

The horse surprised him -- surprised everybody. The odds were long -- he hadn't realized _how_ long when he'd bet -- but it came from behind in the final turn and inched past the favorite to come in first.

He hadn't even counted the money after he cashed in. He'd just nodded blankly as the blonde lady shoved bills out toward him. He'd folded them over, still not believing, putting a rubber band around them and shoving them into his left pants pocket. He'd glanced once behind him, and then he'd smiled.

"Thanks," he'd said.

"You take care, you hear?"

He still couldn't believe it.

All his life, except for the few brief years with Betty, had been unlucky. He'd gone from one bad job to another, from one fly-specked, roach-infested apartment to another, as bad or worse. He realized he hadn't exactly helped himself that much either, but now things were going to be different. He had enough money now in his pocket to buy some new clothes, to pay off his rent, to leave the city. To find a new place where people were hiring -- he wasn't so old that he couldn't still work -- and make a new start.

He glanced behind him. Dusk was falling, but the streetlights were coming on and the evening was bright. He saw two men walking in his direction, maybe half a block behind him. Just sort of strolling, conversing quietly. Too quiet to hear them.

But hadn't he seen them somewhere before? When he'd glanced behind him at the track window?

He shrugged. Probably not, he realized. All he'd seen then was a racetrack crowd. All sorts of people -- most, at the hundred dollar window, better dressed than either him or the men behind him. Still, he began to walk a bit faster.

He began to become more conscious of his surroundings. Night had completely fallen by now and, while there were some lights, there were few people out in the street. This far from the track there was little action. Ahead, where the street sloped down toward the river, it seemed even dimmer, except for the bridge which had its own lights. And the bank across it.

The bank where he lived had its own kind of lighting. Bars. All-night diners. Neon and harshness, a tough kind of lighting, but one he was used to. He hunched up his collar -- the night was still warm, but a breeze was beginning to come from the river. A breeze that, as the city cooled in the night's darkness, blew out to the ocean.

He started to smell the smells of the river -- salt and mud. Dead fish and violence. Not many people lived by the river except for the poor -- people like him -- and the few who liked it. The people who lived by the river by choice, in part because nobody asked any questions.

He felt the heaviness in his pocket.

He looked behind him.