He squeezed the advert into a slow submission, smuggled it into his shoulder bag, wings flapping weakly now to make an escape. Game over, my buzzing beauty! Jazir turned off the computer, quite calmly, retrieved his Chef’s Special from the input slot, and then left the library.
A bag of winnings.
Play to win
Every Saturday daytime Daisy worked part time in a bookshop.
There was no one in the begging hole this morning. Most puzzling. Daisy almost always threw a little something to the young girl. The young girl with the feather in her hair. These last few Saturdays Daisy had thrown a whole pair of punies down into the hole, ill afforded. But so guilty about her own wasting of good money on the bones, what else could she do?
And every week the kid was waiting, eager in the hole, clutching her little card, ‘Hungry and dreamless, please help’. But this week she wasn’t, she wasn’t there to ask for help. Strange. A begging hole was never empty.
Daisy didn’t even know the girl’s name, but felt an affinity with her; another young runaway, no doubt. Because Daisy had made the same escape.
Never mind, time to toil. A gruelling nine-hour shift in the Games and Puzzles Department, which had taken over more than half the shop since Manchester had won the right to test the dominoes. Daisy was tired from lack of sleep, her mind flickering with random images. Last night’s assignments had been more than difficult, as though Professor Hackle was trying to defeat her with probabilities.
And then so many hours in the bookshop, in which she sold over fifty copies of How to Win the Domino Game, and nearly 100 copies of Making Love to Lady Luck. Even a kiddie’s disk called Dominic Domino, Numbernaut. An animated bestseller.
Bone manuals. Books about the chancing at life.
Daisy was kept busy, working on empty, earning just enough for herself to pay for a week’s worth of poppadoms and chutney. Maybe just enough to throw some punies away to the beggars? Sure. And maybe just enough for another domino? Sure, just a little one, maybe.
Eat to win
A big scarlet W, fluttering over a doorway, imagine. Daisy spent her Saturday’s well-earned lunch hour at the local Whoomphy bar, where she shared a meal of jeezburger and econofries with another student employee at the bookshop, the young black boy who called himself Sweet Benny Fenton. Plus two enola colas. Daisy felt quite safe in Benny’s company, even though he was a second-yearer. Maybe this had something to do with Benny’s gay abandon and the diamond in his nose; maybe something more to do with how the boy had quite willingly bought her the meal and the juice.
‘How’s your love life?’ he asked of her, by way of conversation.
‘Oh… well…’
‘Oh well? That’s all?’
‘Oh well, I’m too busy for love, maybe.’
‘I like that maybe on the end. Look, Daisy, maybe I should do your Genetic Calculus? Maybe I’ll pinpoint the little fucker who keeps you so lonely? Go on, Daze. Just a little slice is all it takes. One sliver of pain.’
‘Maybe next week, OK?’
‘Please yourself.’ Benny shovelled another mouthful. ‘What about that two-and-a-five winning last night? Fucking bastard, eh? Somebody’s won an extra million.’
An in-house blurb, passed as pure by the health authorities, fluttered above the heads of the diners, singing the menu. ‘The Big Whoomph! It certainly packs one! Eat to win!’ Street gossip had it that the big scarlet W actually contained a pheromone message, making the viewer feel hungry.
Eat and eat and eat!
Benny gave the fly the V sign, and then washed down a chunk of meat with a gulp of cola. ‘You coming to see Dopejack play tonight, Daze?’ he asked. ‘Frank Scenario’s on the lyrics. His last gig in town. Should be a honey.’
‘Not tonight, Benny. Can’t afford it.’
‘I can get you on the guest list, no problem. Joe Crocus will be there.’
Daisy Love had heard a thousand rumours about the third-yearer who called himself Joe Crocus: how he was the new surfer of the latest numbers, the self-proclaimed wizard of the Black Math ritual.
‘Tonight I’m busy, studying. Professor Hackle is really testing me, lately. Sorry. Maybe next week.’
Maybe next week. Maybe next Saturday. Maybe all the next days of Daisy’s life will be filled up with wanting; lonely wanting and patient numbers and forever the dominoes…
‘Maybe next week the world ends,’ said Benny. ‘You know, Joe Crocus let me unravel his DNA for him. That man has got no qualms, I swear to God. And you know what came up in the numbers? A fucking cancer gene, that’s what.’
‘Jesus. You told him?’