Sin City by Harold Robbins Read Free Book Online Page B

a compartment, the midway with its gyp games and hustlers urging you to “win
a goldfish, just toss a dime so it stays on a plate, it’s easy, watch—”
    Yeah, sure, the carnie’s dime stayed on a plate, but mine skidded off. Over where you threw baseballs at metal milk bottles to knock them off a stool, a woman no bigger than me was working the booth and could easily knock them off, but I swear I saw a guy who threw like Sy Young and couldn’t get all three to fall off no matter what.
    I bought cotton candy and wandered down the midway alone as Gibbs and Gleason went up together in the Ferris wheel. I wanted to check out the freak show.
    â€œBoy, come here,” a voice beckoned.
    A Gypsy woman dressed in silks and scarves and gold chains, her dark face wrinkled, gray eyes faded, stood in front of a small canvas booth not much bigger than a telephone booth and gestured for me to step inside.
    â€œI’ll tell your fortune for a dollar.”
    â€œI don’t have a dollar.” I kept on walking.
    â€œYou’re a lucky young man.”
    That made me stop. My mother called me Lucky every day of my life. It hung around my neck like Mrs. Wormly’s double chin.
    â€œI’m not lucky,” I said defiantly.
    â€œYou’re lucky, boy, and you can have what you want.”
    â€œI want everything,” I snapped back.
    â€œYou’re going to get it. But you’re going to lose something, too.” The old Gypsy woman gave a shrill laugh that got its claws into the skin of my back and clung there as I hurried away.
    I didn’t know what she meant, but she put me into a foul mood.
    â€œLet’s go,” I told Gibbs and Gleason after I saw the Alligator Man and a two-headed calf at the freak show. On the way to the highway to thumb a ride, I told them what the crazy old woman said.
    â€œYou’re going to lose your dick,” Gibbs said, “that’s what.”

7
    The desert in late November had turned cold and the wind was mean. High desert was like that—hot as a bitch in the summer, cold and dismal in the winter. I left school at lunchtime to run down to the restaurant and get money from Betty for lunch. Her tip jar next to the bed was empty when I crept in to get a handful of coins before leaving for school.
    The lunch crowd was slow and Betty was in a bad temper.
    â€œThe customer says the gravy’s too greasy,” she told the cook, sending back a plate of biscuits and gravy. The cook gave her a dirty look and Betty turned her back to him. “The bastard takes bacon left on breakfast plates and uses it for his gravy,” she whispered to me.
    â€œThere was no money in the jar.”
    â€œHop took it all for his beer. Now that he’s laid off at the mine, he has nothing to do but drink and eat, with me doing the buying.”
    She gave me a dollar in change and grabbed the coffeepot to refill a customer’s cup. I left the café with an uneasy feeling. Betty was even tempered most of the time. When she started getting mad at people, things would go to hell pretty damn quick.
    That night I sat on my couch and watched a fuzzy version of I Love Lucy on TV. Gibbs claimed there were places where people got a whole bunch of TV channels, but that didn’t happen in Mina. Hop sat on the other end of the couch drinking beer. Every once in a while he’d fart. That’s why Betty hated beer—it made men fart. His face was red and he didn’t look like a happy camper. Neither did Betty. She sat at the kitchen table doing her nails as she read True Romance magazine. She had come home from work early, saying she felt ill. Betty never got sick and would crawl to work if she had to carry her sickbed on her back. The only time she missed work was when she was down or mad.

    The pan of water on the stove was boiling and I got up to get the Cream of Wheat out of the icebox.
    â€œYou eighty-sixed me at Emerson’s.”