Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

I was about to disappear, too, with Georges even if I had to carry him, when I realized that Georges had made up my mind for me. He had me by my right elbow and had me firmly pointed toward the main entrance of the Palace just beyond that row of pillars. As we stepped into the rotunda he let go my elbow while saying softly, “Slow march, my darling-quietly, quietly. Take my arm.”

I took his arm. The rotunda was fairly crowded but there was no excitement, nothing at all to suggest an attempt had just been made a few meters away to kill the nation’s chief executive. Concession booths rimming the rotunda were busy, especially the offtrack betting windows. Just to our left a young woman was selling lottery tickets-or available to sell them I should say, as she had no customers just then and was watching a detergent drama on her terminal.

Georges turned us and halted us at her booth. Without looking up she said, “Station break coming up. Be with you then. Shop around. Be my guest.”

There were festoons of lottery tickets around the booth. Georges started examining them, so I pretended a deep interest, too. We

stretched the time; presently the commercials started, the young woman punched down the sound and turned to us.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said with a pleasant smile. “I never miss One Woman’s Woes, especially right now when Mindy Lou is pregnant again and Uncle Ben is being so unreasonable about it. Do you follow the theater, deane?”

I admitted that I rarely had time for it-my work interfered.

“That’s too bad; it’s very educational. Take Tim-that’s my roommate-won’t look at anything but sports. So he doesn’t have a thought in his head for the finer things in life. Take this crisis in Mindy Lou’s life. Uncle Ben is purely persecuting her because she won’t tell him who did it. Do you think Tim cares? Not Tim! What neither Tim nor Uncle Ben realizes is that she can’t tell because it happened at a precinct caucus. What sign were you born under?”

I should phrase a prepared answer for this question; human persons are always asking it. But when you weren’t born, you tend to shy away from such things. I grabbed a date and threw it at her: “I was born on the twenty-third of April.” That’s Shakespeare’s birthday; it popped into my mind.

“Oho! Have I got a lottery ticket for you!” She shuffled through one of the Maypole decorations, found a ticket, showed me a number. “See that? And you just walked in here and I had it! This is your day!” She detached the ticket. “That’s twenty bruins.”

I offered a BritCan dollar. She answered, “I don’t have change for that.”

“Keep the change for luck.”

She handed me the ticket, took the dollar. “You’re a real sport, deane. When you collect, stop by and we’ll have a drink together. Mister, have you found one you like?”

“Not yet. I was born on the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the ninth decade. Can you handle it?”

“Woo woo! What a terrific combo! I can try . . . and if I can’t, I won’t sell you anything.” She dug through her piles and strings of paper, humming to herself. She ducked her head under the counter, stayed awhile.

She reappeared, red-faced and triumphant, clutching a lottery ticket. “Got it! Look at it, mister! Give a respectful gander.”

We looked: 8109999

“I’m impressed,” Georges said.

“Impressed? You’re rich. There’s your four nines. Now add the odd digits. Nine again. Divide that into the odd digits. Another nine. Add the last four-thirty-six. That’s nine squared, for two more nines, making another four nines. Add all up at once and it’s five nines. Take away the sum and you have four nines again. No matter what you do, you always keep getting your own birthday. What do you want, mister? Dancing girls?”

“How much do I owe you?”

“That’s a pretty special number. You can have any other number on the rack for twenty bruins. But that one- Why don’t you just keep piling money in front of me until I smile?”