The Gladiator

"It would be nice if she did," Eduardo said. "People find out pretty girls come in here, we get more customers. That wouldn't be bad."

"I guess not." Gianfranco didn't sound so sure, mostly because he wasn't. One of the reasons he liked coming to The Gladiator was that not so many people knew about the place. The ones who did were crazy the same way he was. They enjoyed belonging to something halfway between a club and a secret society. If a bunch of strangers who didn't know the ropes started coming in, it wouldn't be the same.

Eduardo laughed at him. "I know what the difference between us is. You don't have to worry about paying the rent- that's what."

"You don't seem to have much trouble," Gianfranco said. Along with the games and books and miniatures and models The Gladiator sold, it got all the gamers' hourly fees. It had to be doing pretty well-the Galleria del Popolo wasn't a cheap location.

"We manage." Eduardo knocked on the wood of the coun-tertop. "But that doesn't mean it's easy or anything. And we can always use more people. It's the truth, Gianfranco, whether you like it or not."

"You just want to indoctrinate them," Gianfranco said with a sly smile. "You want to turn them all into railroad capitalists or soccer-team capitalists or whatever. By the time you're done, there won't be a proper Communist left in Milan."

Eduardo looked around in what seemed to Gianfranco to be real alarm. After he decided nobody'd overheard Gianfranco, the clerk relaxed-a little. "If you open your big mouth any wider, you'll fall in and disappear, and that'll be the end of you," he said. "And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, either."

"Oh, give me break," Gianfranco said. "I was just kidding. You know that-you'd better, all the time and money I spend in this joint."

"Nobody jokes about capitalists. They're the class enemy," Eduardo said.

"Carlo and I were joking about them while we played. We aren't the only ones, either. You hear guys like that all the time," Gianfranco said.

"That's in the game. It's not real in the game, and everybody knows it's not. I was talking with your girlfriend about that."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"The more fool you," Eduardo said, which flustered Gianfranco. The clerk went on, "As long as you know you're only being capitalists in a game, everything's fine. Games are just pretend."

"Not just," Gianfranco said. "That's what makes your games so good-they feel real."

"Sure they do, but they aren't," Eduardo said. "What happens if you go out into Milan and try to act like a capitalist? The Security Police arrest you, that's what. You want to see what a camp's like from the inside?"

"No!" Gianfranco said, which was the only possible answer to that question. But he couldn't help adding, "I've done too much studying for the game. Sometimes I think what they had back then worked better than what we've got now. The elevator in our building's been out of whack for years, and how come? 'Cause nobody cares enough to fix it."

"If I were a spy, you just convicted yourself," Eduardo said. "For heaven's sake, be careful how you talk. 1 don't want to lose customers, especially when I know they'll never come back."

Gianfranco played back his own words in his head. He winced. "Grazie, Eduardo. You're right. 1 was dumb."

"Dumb doesn't begin to cover it." Eduardo shook his head. "In here, it's a game. Out there"-his gesture covered the world beyond The Gladiator's door-"it's for real. Don't forget it."

He was urgent enough to impress Gianfranco, who said, "I won't." But then he couldn't help putting in, "You know what?"

"What?" Eduardo sounded like somebody holding on to his patience with both hands.

"This stuff with working with prices and raising money works really well in the game," Gianfranco said. "How come it wouldn't work for real?"

Even more patiently, Eduardo answered, "Because the game has its rules, and the outside world has different ones. The Party sets the outside rules, si? And they're whatever the Party says they are, si?"

"Well, sure," Gianfranco said. "But isn't the Party missing a trick? If it changed the real rules so they were more like the ones in the game, I bet a lot of people would get rich. And what's so bad about that?"

"I ought to throw you out of here and lock the door in your face," Eduardo said. "You're smart when it comes to the game, maybe, but you're not so smart when it comes to the real world. The Party does what it wants. If we're lucky-if we're real lucky-it doesn't pay any attention to what a bunch of gamers in a crazy little shop are thinking. You got that?"

“Si, Eduardo. Capisco." Gianfranco yielded more to the clerk's vehemence than to his argument. He thought the argument was weak. But Eduardo seemed ready to punch him in the nose if he tried talking back.

"Bene. You'd better understand, you miserable little-" Sure as blazes, Eduardo was breathing hard. He was ready for any kind of trouble, all right. Gianfranco couldn't quite see why he was getting so excited, but he was. Eduardo wagged a finger at him in a way his own father couldn't have. "You going to do anything dumb?"

"No, Eduardo." Gianfranco didn't want to rattle the clerk's cage. If Eduardo and the other people at The Gladiator did lock him out, he would… He shook his head. He didn't know what he would do then.

"Bene," Eduardo said. "Maybe you're not so dumb. Not quite so dumb, anyhow. Why don't you get out of here for now? Or do you have some other scheme for giving me gray hair before my time?"

"I hope not," Gianfranco said.

"So do I, kid. You better believe it," Eduardo told him. "In that case, beat it." Gianfranco did. Yes, no matter what, he wanted to stay in good with the people here. Next to the games at The Gladiator, the real world was a pretty dull place.

Three

A

After she helped her mother with the dishes, though, she hunted up her father, who was reading a medical journal. "Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Why not?" He put down the journal. "This new procedure sounds wonderful, but it's so complicated and expensive that no one will use it more than once every five years. What's on your mind?"

She told him about visiting The Gladiator. "I don't know what I should say to the Young Socialists' League," she finished.

"Are they hurting anybody?" her father asked. He looked as if he ought to smoke a pipe, but he didn't. He said he'd seen too many cases of mouth cancer to want one of his own.

"Hurting anybody? No." A

"And so? I'm ideologically unsound, too. Most people are, one way or another," her father said. "Most of the time, it doesn't matter. You learn to keep quiet about it when you're not with people you can trust-and you learn not to trust too many people. Or it's about something so silly that you can talk about it and it doesn't count, even if you are sailing against the wind. So what's The Gladiator doing that's so awful?"

"They're selling games that make capitalism look good," A

"Are they?" Whatever her father had expected, that plainly wasn't it. "How do they think they can get away with that?" he asked. A