and then have you chill off on me that way, Jerry. But it's my own
fault, I guess."

* * * * *

The door-bell rang--two soft tones. Joe got up and let in the other
members of our Friday night poker group. I tried to move and couldn't.

Fred raised his eyebrows when he saw Joe's face and hands. "Jerry
isn't here yet? Relaxing a little?" Then he saw me sitting there and
whistled. "Oh, you slipped up, eh?"

Joe nodded. "You were late, and I was hungry, so I thought I'd go
ahead and take my share. I gave him a big kick, and he really poured
it out ... radiated like all hell. I took it in so fast that I
_fluhped_ and lost my plasmic control."

"We might as well eat now, then," Ray said, "before we get down to
playing cards." He sat down across the table, his eyes--now suddenly
enormous and black--eagerly on me. "I hate like hell waiting until you
deal him a big pot--"

"_No_," Joe said sharply. "Too much at one time, and he'd wonder what
hit him. We'll do it just like always ... one of us at a time, and
only a little at a time. Get him when he rakes in the loot. They never
miss it when they feel like that."

"He's right," Fred said. "Take it easy, Ray." He went over to the
sideboard and began mixing drinks.

Joe looked down at me with his black end-of-eggplant eyes.

"Now to fix things," he said.

... I blinked and shook my head. "You owe me fifteen bucks!" I said.

"Lord," Joe wailed, "did this gonif just take me!"

Ray groaned sympathetically from the chair across the table, where
he'd been watching the slaughter. "And how!"

Joe pushed fifteen blue chips at me. I began stacking them. "Well,
that's life," I grinned. Then I shook my head again. "It's the
damnedest thing...."

"What?" Fred asked. He'd been over at the sideboard mixing drinks for
the gang while I'd taken Joe over the bumps. Now he brought the tray
over and shoved a tall one into Joe's hand. "Don't cry, Joe. What's
the damnedest thing, Jerry?"

"You know ... that funny feeling that you've been some place
before--the same place, the same people, saying the same things--but
you can't remember where the hell or when, for the life of you. Had it
just a moment ago, when I told Joe he owed me fifteen bucks. What do
they call it again?"

"_Deja vu_," said Allen, who's sort of the scholarly type. "Means
'seen before' in French, I think. Or something like that."

"That's right," I said. "_Deja vu_ ... it's the damned