e a psi
personality than for you to think you never lose at cards?" she
nailed me.

I could feel my face getting red. "Damn it!" I started. "Nobody
talks to a friend like that!"

"Pretty convincing proof!" Shari said tartly.

"Of what?"

"Of the fact that you aren't making any sense about this gambling
kick you're on, Tex. You should have laughed my teasing off. Who
would seriously suggest that _you_ were a psi personality?" she
demanded. "And most of all, with my background in psi, do you
think I could be misled about it?"

I shrugged, trying to cool down. Shari's doctorate had been
earned with a startling thesis on psi phenomena and psi
personalities, and she had stayed on at Columbia as a research
fellow in the field. In egghead circles, she rated as a psi
expert, all right.

"Guess not," I said, trying to kill the subject.

She wasn't going to let it die. "I don't think you're a psi, Tex.
You're a Normal!" The way she said it, it didn't sound like a
compliment. "Worse than that," she insisted. "You're beginning to
act like a compulsive gambler." She took a deep breath, and let
me have the clincher: "I could never marry a gambler, Tex!"

"You've never been asked," I reminded her.

She had the last word. "Let's go!" she snapped.

* * * * *

Angry as I was about her acting as though I were a snake, I
wished I could have thrown her certification that I was a Normal
in the freckled face of the sharp-chinned gambler at Nick's later
that night. After Shari's needling, I didn't take very kindly to
his popping off with the Law of the Pack. It's understood
wherever people gamble that psis aren't welcome.

Nick didn't like it any better than I did. "All right, Lefty," he
said to the sharp-chinned gambler. "Calm down, huh, kid? What
kinda game you think I run, huh?"

I didn't let the sour start spoil my game. I was lucky right from
the start and hit big in several hands.

Lefty, the gambler who had yelped about psi powers at the game,
dealt the tenth hand. He gave me the eight of spades in the hole.
By the fourth card I had three other spades showing, which gave
me four-fifths of a rare flush in stud poker. But by the fourth
card Lefty had given himself a pair of jacks. That drove all the
other gamblers to cover.

Lefty raised, of course, and it cost me five hundred bucks to see
my fifth card. It was a classic kind of stand-off in stud, and
the waiter stopped with his tray o