The Only Girl in the Game by John D. MacDonald

fight to keep a straight face when he took hold of her hands. “Sweetheart, we had a pretty ugly scene here. I’m glad you missed it.”
    “Whaddaya mean?” she asked blankly.
    “Beaver said we’d both lie, but he said that no matter what we said, he knew a lot more than back scrubbing went on.”
    “Why that dirty.…”
    “So I ordered him out of here, sweetheart. As he was leaving, he left a message for you.”
    “Yeah?”
    “He said to tell you he’d be looking you up soon, and tell you he wants his back scrubbed, and he said you’ll know what he means.”
    The girl turned chalky white and then a violent spastic red. She unleashed a howling stream of vituperation, semi-coherent, so loud that it jarred Jerry Buckler up out of his deep sleep. Her general opinion was that one Beaver Brownell could work on his project thirty hours a day for ten years without ever getting close enough to give her a phone call that would cost less than a dollar toll. As she still spouted, Al eased her out to the private elevator that serviced his suite and, at the last moment, tucked her damp raiment into her hand.
    When he walked back in, grinning, Jerry said, “What the hell was that?”
    Al went over to Gidge and slapped a hundred-dollar bill down on the table. “I say he doesn’t score, not on ole Gretch.”
    “Odds?” Gidge asked.
    “Two to one?”
    “Done,” Al said. “Come up with your fifty. You got confidence, friend.”
    “That Beaver,” Gidge said, “he hardly ever gives up.”
    “There’s one thing for sure,” Bobby Waldo said. “If Gidge wins it won’t be hard to check. Beaver’s women follow him around, howling like stomped dogs.”
    “Ready for three-handed?” Gidge asked.
    “You guys play. I don’t feel like it right now,” Al said. He walked slowly over to the window and looked down at the half-full parking lot, spangled with pastel cars. He saw a young couple get out of a convertible and run, hand in hand, toward the front entrance, laughing at some joke.
    Suddenly he knew the laughter of Gidge and Bobby Waldo had been forced. It hadn’t been a good gag. It had been too complicated and clumsy. A stupid young broad, half stoned, and the old Beaver. Gidge had covered the bet because he knew Al wanted it covered. What had happened to all the good gags and the good laughing times? There wasn’t any action any more. The world has flattened out. The score is nothing to nothing every day lately.
    He heard the steady glug-glug of a bottle and turned sharply and saw Jerry Buckler, his hotel manager in name only,at the bar making himself a half-pint highball of bonded bourbon. He moved quickly and quietly over and put his hand on top of the glass just as Jerry tried to pick it up.
    Jerry looked at him with an uncertain smile, waiting for the punch line. The liquor route, Al realized, had been shrinking the man lately. The belly still bulged and the red face was puffed, but the jacket sagged on him, and the neck was stringy, the shirt collar too big and slightly soiled.
    “You’re leaning on my little drink, sun,” Jerry said in a forced way.
    “I’d hate to see you mix a big one, for chrissake. Let it sit right there. Come on in the bedroom, Jerry.”
    Al closed the door as they went in, and he let Jerry fidget as the silence grew. “Something on your mind, Al?”
    “How was New Orleans?”
    “It was fine, fine. Everybody was fine.”
    “What the hell would you remember about it?”
    Jerry shrugged. “It did get a little drunk over there, Al.”
    “It gets a little drunk everywhere, doesn’t it? For you?”
    “Hell, Al, I can take it or leave it alone. But why should I leave it alone?”
    “You look like a drunk, Jerry. You got the shakes. You got a dirty shirt and dirty hands. You smell dirty. You are a drunk, Jerry.”
    “God damn it, Al!”
    “I love you, baby, but you bore me lately. You really do. I don’t like to see a man let something get on top of him. He isn’t a man any