It ain't often that a couple of gambling
pros get outwitted.
"Take-Off"
by Devereaux Williams
from
Adam
Vol. 2 No. 9 1958
UNQUESTIONABLY,
Dolores was the outstanding beauty among the girls who worked the chorus
at the gambling resort hotel. So, when she wandered into, Max's office
at 10 o'clock in the morning, even though she wore a long, full-sleeved
samba shirt and slacks, the eyes of both men in the room protruded as if
on stalks.
Where Max would have
shooed any one else out of the office at that hour, he merely said, in
not unkindly fashion for him, "Beat it, babe--Jerry and I got business."
Dolores brushed back
shoulder-length black hair and shifted her hips ever-so-slightly as she
pouted, "But, Max, I got a problem."
"What is it, honey?"
the manager asked, chewing on his cigar.
"Money--what else?"
she asked.
Jerry, the assistant
manager, spoke for the first time since Dolores' entrance, He said, "Don't
you broads rake in enough from the suckers after hours?"
Dolores shook her beautiful
head. "I got to get to St. Louis tonight," she told them. "My brother's
in jail, and I need ten grand fast to get him out."
"You think I'm gonna
hand you ten gees because your brother's a punk ?" asked Max, hardening.
"What do you take us
for?" Jerry inquired, scowling fiercely.
"I'm not asking you
to hand me anything," said Dolores patiently. "I know my brother's no good,
but he's still my brother, and I promised my mother just before she died
to keep him out of trouble." She sighed. "I've saved up a thousand dollars,
and I want to shoot it on the dice. If I win, I'll do what I can for him.
If not, well, there won't be anything I can do."
"Why don't you try when
the tables are open ?" growled Jerry.
"Because I'm working
the show then," said Dolores. "Besides, there's no time. To do any good,
I gotta be out of here on the noon plane."
Max chewed his cigar
for a long, reflective moment. Then he said, "Let's see your dough, babe."
Since the costly cooling
system was turned down during off-hours, the gambling room was hot and
close. Outside, the mid-morning sun was beating down at a merciless 100-plus
degrees, Fahrenheit, and the mere effort of stripping the cloth from a
dice-table made the men drip with sweat.
"Goodness !" the girl
exclaimed. "I didn't know it got this hot."
"So what?" countered
Jerry crudely. "We won't be here long."
She hesitated, then
said, "Would you fellows mind if I took off my shirtwaist?"
"Why should we mind
?" countered Max, removing his cigar to rub a bit of detached leaf from
his lower lip.
"I'll never be able
to keep my mind on the dice like this," said Dolores, frowning prettily.
She hesitated again, briefly, then unbuttoned the light, half transparent
linen blouse and shrugged.
Although, essentially,
they were gamblers, Max and Jerry were thoroughly inured to lush feminent
nudity by the very nature of their jobs. They would not have cast a second
look at Lady Godiva riding down the Main Street of Coventry on her white
horse in the altogether.
But so extraordinarily
lovely was the sight of Dolores' full, firm young breasts, seen thus informally,
unexpectedly and at such close range, that Max almost swallowed his cigar.
He could not remove his eyes from the pearly, pink-tipped globes, as Dolores
leaned forward to cast the dice on the marked green cloth, as she stood
straight to rattle them and cast again...and again...
Not until she had resumed
her blouse and swung gracefully out, after running six straight passes
into a 64-grand roll, did he begin to function once more. A sudden, horrid
thought struck him, and he turned to Jerry and asked, "Hey! Were you watching
those dice?"
Jerry looked at him
with answering horror. "What?" he cried. "I thought you was watching them."
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