“You feel as lucky as you look?”

“Pretty much. I’ve been whopped on a time or two before. You try to avoid it but it’s like anything else—there’s hazards peculiar to the work. Like I said, it’s not so much the what as the who.”

“Which is?”

“Which is the brother-in-law of the mayor.”

“Married to his sister or his wife’s sister?”

“Sister.”

“I don’t see the problem. Man’s not going to run to his brother-in-law complaining about some entertainer girl who wouldn’t do as he wanted.”

“That’s exactly the problem. That’s where you’re wrong and where I got into trouble. See, Mayor Townsend, he bet his brother-in-law twenty dollars that he wouldn’t be able to bed me. And the fellow, Michael Heany is his name, he’s been trying for a month, being a sweet little lump of cash growing in my pocket. And last night when he lost his temper with me I went right on like I can’t help myself and laughed at him, telling him on top of everything else he was out twenty dollars to Townsend. That’s when he took hold of my arm and started in larruping on my head.”

“Still, it seems to me he’d be the one worried, what he did to you.”

She nodded. “It’s a game, see? The rules ain’t written down but everybody knows them. A girl can take a boyfriend and everybody knows about it and it’s all right. And all the men think that’s what they want. But if a girl just sleeps with the men, takes their presents and cash and sleeps with them, well then she’s a whore and nobody else wants to chase after her. It’s all the chase, see? It’s all in trying, not getting.”

“I still don’t see the problem.”

“Pride,” she said. “Mister Michael Heany made the mistake of talking about how head over heels he was about me and Townsend made him the bet. That took it outside the rules, see? It wasn’t any longer a game but a competition. But the thing is, now it’s over, the one who has to lose, lose finally and all the way, isn’t Michael Heany. It’s me. And it’s not just Charlie will be rid of me, it’ll be the whole town. I have to get out of here.”

He studied her. After a time he said, “You going to drink the end of that coffee or could I have some?”

She shook her head. “Those powders are working. I don’t need anymore.”

He took up the can and drank what was left, cold. Then said, “It all makes sense but for the last. He already beat up on you. What more could he do?”

She took a bite of the cold sandwich and shuddered and put it down. “That’s how I know you’re fresh in town, Slick. Because Mister Michael Heany, he’s just a numbnuts clerk in the city hall. But his brother, he’s the chief of police.”

“It’s not such a great thing.”