The Year of the Jackpot Read Online Free Page B

anything like this was the so-called Era of Wonderful Nonsense. But this one is much worse.” He delved into a lower drawer, hauled out a graph. “The amplitude is more than twice as great and we haven’t reached peak. What the peak will be, I don’t dare guess—three separate rhythms, reinforcing.”
    She peered at the curves. “You mean that the lad with the arctic real estate deal is somewhere on this line?”
    “He adds to it. And back here on the last crest are the flagpole sitters and the goldfish swallowers and the Ponzi hoax and the marathon dancers and the man who pushed a peanut up Pikes Peak with his nose. You’re on the new crest—or you will be when I add you in.”
    She made a face. “I don’t like it.”
    “Neither do I. But it’s as clear as a bank statement. This year the human race is letting down its hair, flipping its lip with a finger, and saying, ‘
Wubba, wubba, wubba.
’”
    She shivered. “Do you suppose I could have another drink? Then I’ll go.”
    “I have a better idea. I owe you a dinner for answering questions. Pick a place and we’ll have a cocktail before.”
    She chewed her lip. “You don’t owe me anything. And I don’t feel up to facing a restaurant crowd. I might—I might—”
    “No, you wouldn’t,” he said sharply. “It doesn’t hit twice.”
    “You’re sure? Anyhow, I don’t want to face a crowd.” She glanced at his kitchen door. “Have you anything to eat in there? I can cook.”
    “Um, breakfast things. And there’s a pound of ground top round in the freezer compartment and some rolls. I sometimes make hamburgers when I don’t want to go out.”
    She headed for the kitchen. “Drunk or sober, fully dressed or—or naked, I can cook. You’ll see.”
    H e did see. Open-faced sandwiches with the meat married to toasted buns and the flavor garnished rather than suppressed by scraped Bermuda onion and thin-sliced dill, a salad made from things she had scrounged out of his refrigerator, potatoes crisp but not vulcanized. They ate it on the tiny balcony, sopping it down with cold beer.
    He sighed and wiped his mouth. “Yes, Meade, you can cook.”
    “Some day I’ll arrive with proper materials and pay you back. Then I’ll prove it.”
    “You’ve already proved it. Nevertheless, I accept. But I tell you three times—which makes it true, of course—that you owe me nothing.”
    “No? If you hadn’t been a Boy Scout, I’d be in jail.”
    Breen shook his head. “The police have orders to keep it quiet at all costs—to keep it from growing. You saw that. And, my dear, you weren’t a person to me at the time. I didn’t even see your face.”
    “You saw plenty else!”
    “Truthfully, I didn’t look. You were just a—a statistic.”
    She toyed with her knife and said puzzled, “I’m not sure, but I think I’ve just been insulted. In all the twenty-five years that I’ve fought men off, more or less successfully, I’ve been called a lot of names—but a ‘statistic?’ Why, I ought to take your slide rule and beat you to death with it.”
    “My dear young lady—”
    “I’m not a lady, that’s for sure. But I’m
not
a statistic, either.”
    “My dear Meade, then. I wanted to tell you, before you did anything hasty, that in college I wrestled varsity middleweight.”
    She grinned and dimpled. “That’s more the talk a girl likes to hear. I was beginning to be afraid you had been assembled in an adding machine factory. Potty, you’re really a dear.”
    “If that is a diminutive of my given name, I like it. But if it refers to my waist line, I definitely resent it.”
    She reached across and patted his stomach. “I like your waist line; lean and hungry men are difficult. If I were cooking for you regularly, I’d really pad it.”
    “Is that a proposal?”
    “Let it lie, let it lie. Potty, do you really think the whole country is losing its buttons?”
    He sobered at once. “It’s worse than that.”
    “Huh?”
    “Come inside.