The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (13 page)

The announcement of the trip fell into Flora’s life like a star shell bursting over a no-man’s-land. Even Franklin was momentarily taken aback at the suddenly animated appearance of his normally drab-faced wife. It gradually dawned on him that Flora was quite serious about wanting to take the trip to Vegas. There was a scene over the breakfast table the morning after the telegram’s arrival. Franklin told his wife in no uncertain terms that gambling in Las Vegas was for the very rich or the very foolish. It was not for the stable or the moral and since morality and stability meant a great deal to Mr. Gibbs, they would have to telegraph back to the contest people (collect, Mr. Gibbs parenthetically noted) to acquaint them with their decision about Las Vegas, Nevada, and, as Mr. Gibbs put it, “its decidedly questionable roadhouse vice-dens.”

When Mr. Gibbs returned from the bank that noontime for lunch, there wasn’t any. Flora was crying in her room and, for the first time in a rooster-pecked, subservient, acquiescent life, she took a stand. She had won the trip to Las Vegas and she was going, with or without Franklin. This information was imparted through heavy sobbing and a spasmodic rendition of a biblical quotation something about whither thou goest I shalt go; something some lady in the Old Testament had said to another lady, but sufficiently close in its application here to cover a husband not accompanying his wife on a trip to Las Vegas. But actually it was a combination of a long Memorial Day weekend and the fact that the trip was free that finally made Franklin Gibbs change his mind.

A week later, Franklin, in his shiny, tight, blue Kiwanis Officer’s Installation suit with vest and lapel button, and Flora, in a flower-patterned cotton dress with a big green sash and a flowerpot hat with a large feather, took the six-and-a-half-hour flight to Las Vegas, Nevada. Flora spent the entire six-and-a-half hours gurgling excitedly; Franklin remained petulantly silent with only an occasional remark about any state government so totally immoral as to permit legalized gambling.

They were met at the airport by a hotel car which drove them to the Desert Frontier Palace—a gaudy, low-slung, sweeping structure emblazoned with nude girls in neon. Flora spent the automobile trip telling the driver all about Elgin, Kansas, in a high-pitched, ludicrously girlish way. Franklin remained silent except for a single comment on a platinum blonde who passed in front of the car when it stopped for a light. This was to the effect that she seemed typical of a town of decidedly questionable virtue.

Their room was air-conditioned, very modern and comfortable in a highly chromed way. The management had left a bowl of fruit and a vase of flowers which Flora nervously rearranged three or four times, while she chattered at her husband. Franklin sat glumly reading a Chamber of Commerce booklet from the City Fathers of Las Vegas, punctuating the few silences with negative comparisons between Vegas and much more solid, if smaller, Elgin, Kansas.

An hour later there was a knock on the door and the hotel public relations man entered with a photographer. His name was Marty Lubow and he wore the professional greeter’s smile with competence.

“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs,” Lubow asked, “is your room comfortable? Is there anything at all you need? Anything I can do for you?”

Flora’s voice trilled nervously as her hands darted around her dress, pulling up, yanking down, straightening, smoothing. “Oh, it’s lovely, Mr. Lubow, just lovely. You make us feel—well, you make us feel important!”

Lubow laughed jovially back at her, “Well, after all, you are important, Mrs. Gibbs. It isn’t every day we can entertain a celebrated contest winner!”

The photographer at his elbow looked glum and whispered over his shoulder, “Not every day—maybe every
other
day.”

Lubow’s laugh covered the photographer’s voice and pushed its way through the room. There was something enveloping about Mr. Lubow’s laugh. It was his own special weapon for every emergency.

“I think,” he said, “we should take our pictures right here. I think standing in the middle of the room would be best, don’t you, Joe?”

The photographer heaved a deep sigh which was a combination of agreement and resignation. He stuck a bulb in the flash section of the camera, then leaned against the door lining up the shot. Lubow ushered Flora to a spot in the center of the room, then beckoned to Franklin who remained silently dour in his chair.

“Right over here next to your lovely missus, Mr. Gibbs,” he said happily.

Franklin let out a long-suffering sigh, rose and walked over to stand close to Flora.

“Wonderful,” gushed Lubow, looking at the two of them with amazed eyes, as if by joining them in the center of the room he had performed a feat only a degree less amazing than climbing the Matterhorn all alone. “Just wonderful,” he repeated. “All right, Joe, how’s that look?”

The photographer responded by taking the picture and left both Flora and Franklin blinking in the aftermath of the flash—Flora with her fixed, nervous smile, and Franklin staring malevolently and challengingly toward the photographer. Again Lubow’s laughter shook the room. He pounded on Franklin’s back, wrung his hand, patted Flora’s cheek and somehow, in the same motion, headed toward the door. The photographer had already opened it and was on his way out.

“Now you folks just keep in touch with us—” Lubow was saying as he left.

“It’s
The Elgin Bugle
, Mr. Lubow,” Flora called after him.

Lubow turned. “How’s that?” he inquired.

“That’s our home town paper,” Flora answered. “
The Elgin Bugle
.”

“Of course, of course, Mrs. Gibbs.
The Elgin Bugle
. We’ll send a copy of the picture right out to them. Enjoy yourselves, folks, and welcome to Las Vegas and the Desert Frontier Palace.”

He winked happily at Flora, grinned manfully at Franklin and was only momentarily nonplussed by the frozen petulance on Franklin’s face. He recovered sufficiently to wave as he walked away. His laughter was a twenty-one-gun salute honoring nothing in particular, but in an odd way pulling the curtain down on the meeting.

It was another fifty-five minutes before Flora could persuade her husband to go out to the gambling room and see what it was like. It took the bulk of those minutes for her to persuade him that there was nothing immoral in just
watching
people gambling. And in the intervals between argument she was forced to listen to Franklin’s own personal critique on the miserable weakness of human beings who threw away money on dice, cards and machines. In the end he suffered himself to be put into his Kiwanis Officer Installation coat once again and led by Flora into the main building of the hotel, and then into the principal gambling room. It was a plush, noisy, people-loaded room, crowded with crap tables, a long bar, roulette wheels and three rows of one-armed bandits. It was a room full of noises that rose up from the heavily carpeted floor, touched the acoustical ceiling, and though softened by both, nonetheless hung in the air. The noises were gambling noises. There was the spinning clatter of roulette wheels. The tinkle of glasses. The metallic clack, clack, clack of the one-armed bandit levers being pulled down. There were the droning voices of the croupiers calling out numbers, red and black, and underneath all of this the varied pitch of human voices—the nervous squeals of the winners, the protesting groans of the losers. The sounds fused together and hit Franklin and Flora Gibbs with the force of an explosion as they entered the room and stood there on the periphery of the activity, staring into the strange, gaudy and noisy new world.

The two of them stood at the door trying to feel at ease, conscious for the first time of how they looked—Flora, a fluttery woman, in an unfashionable dress with a corsage that did nothing but emphasize dullness; Franklin, a little man in a 1937 suit, with slicked-down hair, pointed shoes and a look of midwestern primness, worn defensively like a badge. They were two foreign elements at this moment, joined together in a bond of inferiority closer, perhaps, than they ever shared in Elgin, Kansas.

They stood there like that for ten minutes, watching the tables, the games, the stacks of chips and silver dollars; the glamorous-looking women and the impeccable men. Flora’s eyes grew wider and wider. She turned to Franklin.

“It has such a flavor, this place!”

He looked at her, fishy-eyed, then turned up his nose. “Flavor, Flora? I’m surprised at you. You know how I feel about gambling.”

Flora smiled appeasingly. “Well, this is different though, Franklin—”

“It is neither different nor moral. Gambling is gambling! It’s
your
vacation, Flora. But I must, in good conscience, repeat to you what I have been saying all along—that it’s a tragic waste of time. Hear me, Flora? A tragic waste of time!”

Flora’s lower lip trembled and she reached out to touch his arm. “Please, Franklin,” she said quietly, “try to enjoy it, won’t you? We haven’t had a vacation in such a long time. Such a very long time. A vacation—or even a good time together.’’

Franklin’s left eyebrow shot upward and his voice was that of a wounded Congressional Medal of Honor winner who had suddenly been told he had to go back on the line. “It is a matter of record, Flora,” he announced, “that I work desperately hard and I have very little time—” It was the opening paragraph to a tailor-made speech that Franklin delivered at least once a month. It was when he branched off into a new tack, alleging that he felt unclean in this kind of room with semi-clad girls and dice throwers, that he realized Flora was no longer listening to him.

Across the room a one-armed bandit had lit up, a bell clanged, and a woman screamed hysterically. After a moment, a long-legged blonde in tights, carrying a basket of money, walked over to the woman by the machine, called out its number to a floor manager and then handed the woman the basket of money She was immediately surrounded by members of her party who took her to the bar, all chattering like happy squirrels.

Flora left Franklin’s side and went to the one-armed bandits spread along one whole side of the room. From where she stood it looked like a forest of arms yanking down levers. There was a continuous clack, clack, clack of levers, then a click, click, click of tumblers coming up. Following this was a metallic poof sometimes followed by the clatter of silver dollars coming down through the funnel to land with a happy smash in the coin receptacle at the bottom of the machine.

Franklin was studying the long-legged blonde with sour disapproval, and was unaware that Flora had taken a nickel out of her purse until she dropped the coin into one of the machines. Flora was reaching for the lever when she realized that Franklin was glaring at her. She flushed, forced a smile and then looked supplicatingly at him.

“Franklin, it’s—it’s only a nickel machine, dear.”

His high-pitched voice sandpapered against her. “Just a nickel machine, Flora?
Just
a nickel machine! Why don’t you just go out and throw handfuls of nickels into the street?”

“Franklin, darling—”

He moved closer to her, his voice low, but full of a carefully closeted fury. “All right, Flora, we go to Las Vegas. We waste three days and two nights. We do it because that’s your idiotic way of enjoying yourself. And it doesn’t cost us anything. But now you’re spending our money. Not even spending it, Flora—you’re just throwing it away. And it’s at this point, Flora, that I have to take a hand. You are obviously not mature enough—”

There was the suggestion of pain in Flora’s eyes. Her face was edged with a nervousness that Franklin recognized as a prelude to several hours of quiet handwringing, and deep, spasmodic sighs. It was Flora’s only defense over the years.

“Please...please, Franklin, don’t make a scene,” she whispered. “I won’t play. I promise you—” She turned to the machine and then, with a kind of hopeless gesture, back to him. “The nickel’s already in.”

Franklin heaved a deep, resigned sigh and looked up toward the ceiling. “All right,” he said. “Throw it away. Pull down the lever or whatever it is you do. Just throw it away”

Flora kept her eyes on Franklin as she pulled the lever down, listening to the sound of the tumblers and then the empty poof and then the silence. The comers of Franklin’s mouth twitched in a righteous smile, and for one fleeting moment Flora hated him. Then habit took over for her, and she stood quietly at her husband’s elbow and heard him declare that he was going back to the room to get ready for dinner. “I guess I’m not very lucky,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer. At the door she looked straight into his face.

“Franklin, it was only a nickel.”

“Twenty of them make a dollar, Flora, and I work hard for those dollars!”

He was about to open the door when a drunk standing by a dollar machine turned and saw him. The drunk grabbed Franklin, pulled him over to the machine. Franklin recoiled as if exposed to something infective, but the drunk held Franklin firmly with one hand, a glass in the other.

“Here, old buddy,” the drunk said, “—you try it.” He put down his glass and took a silver dollar from his pocket. “Here, go ahead. I’m one hour and thirty minutes on this miserable, crummy, money-grabbin—!” He forced the silver dollar into Franklin’s hand. “Go ahead, old pal. It’s yours. You play it.”

A woman at the bar waved frantically at them. “Charlie,” she screamed, “are you gonna come over here or am I gonna come over there and get you?”

“I’m coming, honey, I’m coming,” he answered. He smiled at Franklin, burped out a shaft of Johnny Walker-flavored air, patted Franklin on the back and then guided his hand, still holding the silver dollar, into the slot on top of the machine.

Franklin looked like a small animal caught in a trap. He looked wildly left and right, searching for aid, embarrassed, discomfited, frightened.

“Really,” Franklin said, “I’m not at all interested. Please, I’m in a hurry—”

The drunk chortled happily as the silver dollar was deposited in the slot, then walked unsteadily toward the bar.

Franklin glowered at the machine. His first thought was the possibility of getting the silver dollar back without having to play it. He studied the machine intently It was like all the others. Big, gaudily lit, with a glass-covered compartment in the center, showing an incredible number of silver dollars inside its big metal gut. Two lights over this compartment had an odd similarity to eyes and the slot at the bottom filled out the picture of a monstrous neon face. Franklin raised his right hand to the lever. Over his shoulder he saw Flora smiling hopefully. Then, as if taking a big decisive step, he yanked down the lever, watched the whirling tumblers that one after another came to a stop, showing two cherries and a lemon. There was a loud metallic clack and then the sound of the coins as they arrived in the receptacle at the bottom—ten of them.