Free Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Page B

you’d better not. I’ve got a lot of money bet on who’s going to win.”
    “Now, see here, Finnerty,” said Kroner placatingly, “let’s call it a draw, shall we? I mean, after all, the boy’s got a right to be upset, and—”
    “Draw, hell,” said Finnerty. “Paul beat Checker Charley fair and square.”
    “I’m beginning to see, I think,” said Berringer menacingly. He gathered Finnerty’s lapels in his hands. “What’d you do to Checker Charley, wise guy?”
    “Ask Baer. His head was in there with mine. Baer, did I do anything to Charley?”
    “What, eh? Do anything, do anything? Damage, you mean? No, no, no,” said Baer.
    “So sit down and finish the game, fat boy,” said Finnerty. “Or concede. Either way, I want my money.”
    “If you didn’t do anything to Charley, how come you were so sure he’d lose?”
    “Because my sympathy’s with any man up against a machine, especially a machine backing up a knucklehead like you against a man like Paul. Besides, Charley had a loose connection.”
    “Then you should have said so!” said Berringer. He gestured at the ruins of the machine. “Look—just look, will you? Look what you did by not telling me about the connection. I ought to mop this place up with your dirty face.”
    “Now, now, now—there, there,” said Kroner, stepping between the two. “You should have said something about that connection, Ed. This is a shame, a real shame.”
    “If Checker Charley was out to make chumps out of men, he could damn well fix his own connections. Paul looks after his own circuits; let Charley do the same. Those who live by electronics, die by electronics.
Sic semper tyrannis.”
He gathered up the bills from the table. “Good night.”
    Anita dug her fingernails into Paul’s arm. “Oh Paul, Paul, he’s ruined the whole evening.”
    On his way out, Finnerty paused by Paul and Anita. “Nice going, champ.”
    “Please give them their money back,” said Anita. “The machine wasn’t working right. Be fair. Isn’t that right, Paul?”
    To the amazement of the whole somber group, Paul lost control and burst out laughing.
    “That’s the spirit, champ,” said Finnerty. “I’m going home now, before these gentlemen sportsmen find a rope.”
    “Home? Washington?” said Anita.
    “Your house, dear. I haven’t got a place in Washington any more.”
    Anita closed her eyes. “Oh, I see.”

6

    “W HAT WAS HIS expression like when he said it?” said Anita.
    Paul had the comforter pulled up over his face and was trying to get to sleep tightly curled in the dark, muffled womb he made of his bed each night. “He looked sad,” he murmured. “But he always looks sad—real sweet and sad.”
    For three hours they had been going over the events of the evening at the club, coming back again and again to what Kroner had said by way of farewell.
    “And he didn’t take you aside for a couple of words at any time?” She was wide awake.
    “Scout’s honor, Anita, all he said was what he said at the last.”
    She repeated Kroner’s words judiciously, “ ‘I want you to come see me and Mom sometime next week, Paul.’ ”
    “That’s all.”
    “Nothing about Pittsburgh?”
    “No,” he said patiently. “I tell you, no.” He tucked the comforter more snugly around his head and pulled his knees up higher. “No.”
    “Haven’t I got a right to be interested?” she said. He’d evidently hurt her. “Is that what you’re telling me, that I haven’t the right to care?”
    “Gladja care,” he said thickly. “Fine, wonderful, thanks.” In the quasi nightmare of being only half asleep, he visualized the notion of man and wife as one flesh—a physical monstrosity, pathetic, curious, and helpless Siamese twins.
    “Women
do
have insight into things that men don’t have,” she was saying. “We notice important things that menlet go by. Kroner wanted
you
to break the ice about Pittsburgh tonight, and you just—”
    “We’ll find out what