While Sarah takes a shower, T.K. puts in a long-distance call to his bet handler in Las Vegas. He pulls his vidphone onto the bed and sets it beside him on a pillow, arranging its pickup unit so that the bet handler gets a view of T.K.’s bare feet rather than his equally bare chest and midsection.

He punches in the number and suffers through the mandatory pre-call advertising message. Because his call is long distance, he gets a full thirty seconds’ worth. The commercial is for Tonetime, an ultrasonic tooth cleaner. T.K. already has one. He considers it a worthwhile implement. He has enough pain. He doesn’t want to risk an aching tooth besides.

The vidphone hardly buzzes once before someone picks it up. A volume business is the bet handler’s stock in trade. The quicker he answers, the quicker he covers a bet, the quicker he can hang up and let the chain start all over. “Bernie, T.K. Lay off a round one for me on Sunday’s game with Atlanta.”

“Which end?”

“You have to ask?”

“Right. You’re covered. Ten thousand dollars on the Prospectors to win.”

“And, Bernie, what’re my odds?”

Bernie consults a sheet of paper at his side. “Six to four against.”

“That high, huh?”

“You made it through too many already, T.K. Nobody lives forever.” Bernie never minces words.

“I got another round one says I live at least until Monday morning.”

“You’re covered. Anything else?”

“Harv Matision.”

Bernie doesn’t consult his sheet this time. “Two gets you three if he makes it.”

“Four that he doesn’t.”

“Covered. That it?”

“That’s it.”

Bernie hangs up without saying goodbye.

“Isn’t that illegal?” Sarah, fresh from the shower, stands in the bathroom door, toweling dry her hair. It gives T.K. a perfect opportunity to partake of one of his newest found pleasures, studying her naked body. He finds it as perfectly executed as a well run sweep around end. Her full, thrusting breasts with their barely perceptible nipples. The slight faking outward of her stomach, the delicate rounding of her buttocks and thighs.

They became lovers after the twelfth game of the season, the Greys game, the one in which T.K. took a merciless pounding. She had ministered to him all day Monday, sleeping over on his sofa to be near him should he need her in the night. When he awoke screaming, she had rushed to his side, her body completely exposed beneath the thin acetate of her cling-on pajamas. It had happened so naturally, so perfectly, so miraculously free of pain, that the next morning, had they not awakened in the same bed and gone through the same blissful motions again, he would have sworn he had dreamed it.

That afternoon, she had moved in permanently.

“Sort of,” T.K. says in response to her query about his gambling.