Free Don't Bet On It by J. L. Salter Page B

Verdeville has finally arrived to let me out."
    "Out of what? Where are you? Ow! Crud! What is this?" He'd finally found the left side of my cage.
    "I'm in the fund-raiser jail. Quit stalling and get me out. I need a restroom. Come around to the front and watch out for the…"
    "Ow! Splinters!"
    "…splinters."
    "Thanks for the warning." He sighed so heavily I could smell his breath. He'd drunk the punch too.
    "Come around and let me out."
    "Where's the door?"
    "Just follow the splinters and turn to your, uh, right when you run out of bars."
    With a few stumbles, another splinter, and some uncreative curses, the mystery man finally reached the door. "Okay. I'm here."
    I already knew that because I smelled his breath again as he panted from the exertion. "Can you un-do this latch thingy?"
    "Where is it?"
    I realized he couldn't see my hand pointing directly at the latch. "I'm holding it. My arm's through the bars and I've got the thingy in my hand." I realized that could sound, um, unusual if overheard by anybody. I heard his hands roam over the outside of the cage door. He was too high. I sighed heavily and gave back a whiff of punch-breath.
    Suddenly his fingertips touched my forearm. He yelped and recoiled.
    It startled me too, but I wasn't going to act like a sissy. "That's nearly my elbow. Go the other way about a foot or so and my hand's on the latch dealie."
    "Okay. It threw me a bit to touch flesh. My fingers expected wood." Yeah, mine too.
    This stranger was tall — I could tell from the source of his breath, which surely needed a mint. His hands gently explored my forearm to re-establish the location of my elbow. Then he walked his fingers the other direction, toward my hand and the latch. If he intended to grope me like this, he owed me dinner. Large hands and long fingers. Short nails. Some calluses on his fingers and the pads of his palm, but not like a lumberjack. Just a man who knew how to work with his hands but probably didn't rely on those skills for his paycheck.
    "Will you get on to the latch?" I truly needed a restroom. I would have been hopping by then if I weren't worried about that spider web above.
    "Well, let go of it and give me a chance at the mechanism." A slight bit of spittle when he sighed again. Not sure I wanted to share spit from a tall stranger in the dark. "Okay, I have it in my hands, but I don't understand how it goes."
    I thought men could undo anything except left-handed buttons. "It felt like a doo-hicky that latches the overhead door on a rental van or something."
    "Oh!" The light came on — in his head, that is. "One of those. Okay. No sweat." Two smooth movements and it was open. Of course, it took two hands like I said before. Humph .
    I reached down for my shoes, quickly found them, and then pushed on the door, apparently before he'd moved away. It caught him somewhere on his trunk.
    "Ooof!"
    "Sorry. Like I said, I need a powder room."
    He made noise backing up. "Okay, take off… for wherever."
    "Where are you going to be?" Didn't want a strange man lurking in the dark.
    "On your tail or as close as I can, without tripping."
    "I don't want a stranger following me."
    "I need to use that same facility."
    There wasn't much I could do about that. "Whatever. Well, the door ought to be way over there where that exit sign is." It was the kind with three or four small bulbs normally, but that particular one had only one dim lamp glowing. The signs over the other doors must have burned out completely. They didn't spend much on maintenance in abandoned armories.
    "Oh, yeah. Switch by the exit door. Makes sense."
    So the tall man also had some cognitive powers. Wonder what he looks like? "Do you remember what's between us and that door?"
    "Nope. Never been here before. I'm new in town. Plus, I don't know what part of this place we're at right now." His feet made a shuffling sound as he changed the subject. "So how come nobody let you out of that cage?"
    "Karla was supposed