The Gladiator

"We have crazy people locked up in a psychiatric hospital who make them up," Eduardo told her.

She blinked. He really did like to see how close to the wind he could sail. Everybody knew the Party put troublemakers in psychiatric hospitals. Getting into one of those places was easy. Coming out? Coming out was a different story.

Everybody knew that, but hardly anybody talked about it. If you talked about it to the wrong people, you might wind up inside a psychiatric hospital yourself. But Eduardo didn't seem worried. He gri

A

She walked over to the shelves. There were titles like Making Your Corporation Profitable and Economics of Club Ownership alongside others like Greece and Rome at War. "You sell… interesting books," she said.

"Well, if they weren't interesting, who'd buy them?" Ed-uardo spread his hands and answered his own question: "Nobody, that's who. Then I couldn't make my living having fun. I'd have to do something honest instead." He gri

Even though A

"They are," he said simply.

"But-how can you sell them, then?" A

"Because they're just for the games," he replied. "Everybody who buys them knows it. If there were real capitalists, that would bring back the bad old days. But these are like books on chess openings and endgames. They help people play belter, that's all."

He was as smooth as silk, as slick as olive oil. That only made A

"You're smart. Not many people asked questions like that." Eduardo sounded admiring. Then people in the back room started yelling. "Excuse me," he said, and ducked back there. A moment later, A

He came out a few minutes later shaking his head. "Argument over the rules. Dumb argument over the rules. Where were we, pretty lady?"

A

"That's right." Eduardo nodded. "Nothing fancy about it. We do it the same way the Church gets away with teaching what it teaches."

"This isn't religion. This is economics," A

"Of course. But a lot of what the Church says goes against science and against dialectical materialism and against Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. Everybody who thinks about it would say that's so. Why does the state let the Church do it, then?" Because people would riot if the state didn't, A

He made it sound simple, anyway. How many complications lurked under that smooth surface? Quite a few, unless A

Gianfranco counted out his latest payment for delivering Russian oil to Paris. "Twenty-three million there," he said, as if the bright play-money bills were real. "That puts me at 509 million." As soon as you went over 500 million, you won. Carlo was still a good sixty million away.

"Si, you got me," he said, and stuck out his hand across the board. Gianfranco shook it. Carlo went on, "When we got into that second price war, that ruined me. You were smart there, Gianfranco. I didn't think you'd do anything like that."

"I'm not always as dumb as I look," Gianfranco said, which made the university student laugh. They got up and went out to the front counter together.

"Who won?" Eduardo asked.

Gianfranco stuck his thumb up. Carlo stuck his down. That was what you did at The Gladiator. The people who ran the shop hadn't started it. The people who played there did. In the ancient Roman arenas, a raised thumb was a vote for sparing a downed gladiator's life. A lowered one was a vote to finish him off. Somebody who knew that must have done it for a joke the first time. Now everybody did.

"Let's see…" Eduardo pulled out a chart. "Gianfranco beats Carlo in Rails across Europe. Gianfranco, that means you play Alfredo next. Carlo, you go down into the losers' bracket, and you play Vittorio."

"I'll beat him." Carlo didn't lack confidence. Common sense, sometimes, but never confidence.

"Alfredo?" Gianfranco didn't sound so bold. "He'll be dangerous. He studies the game all the time." Alfredo was older than Eduardo. He wore a mustache, and it had some white hairs in it. He was out of school, so he didn't have to worry about homework and projects and things. He had a job, but who took jobs seriously? He spent as much time at work as he could get away with on his hobby, and just about all the time after he got home. He was a fanatic, no two ways about it.

"Hope the dice go your way," Eduardo said. "If you have enough luck, all the other guy's skill doesn't matter. Might as well be life, eh?"

"Si." That was Carlo, still looking for a way to console himself after losing.

"It's a long game," Gianfranco said. "Most of the time, the dice and the cards even out."

"Well, in that case you'd better pray, because Alfredo will eat you for lunch like fettuccine," Carlo said. "I've got to go. Ciao." He walked out without giving Gianfranco a chance to snap back at him.

"He thought he'd beat you," Eduardo said.

"I know. He figured I was a kid, so I wouldn't know what I was doing," Gianfranco said. "I guess I showed him." Then, cautiously, he asked, "What did A

"She seemed interested," answered the man behind the counter. "She's more political than you are, isn't she?"

Gianfrarrco knew what that meant-A

"She seemed nice, though. She's smart-you can tell," Eduardo went on.

"Uh-huh," Gianfranco said. Nobody ever went, He's smart-you can tell about him. He got by, and that was about it.

"She really did seem interested," Eduardo said. "Do you suppose she'll come back and play?"

"I don't know," Gianfranco said in surprise. "I didn't even think of it." A few girls did come to The Gladiator. Two or three of them were as good at their games as most of the guys. But it was a small and mostly male world. Some guys who had been regulars stopped coming so often-or at all-when they found a steady girlfriend or got married. Gianfranco thought that was the saddest thing in the world.