and you heard me. I always did have an affinity for cute flowers. None for cute women though.
My feet are on the table, and I'm smoking a cigarette. It tastes saline, as if it were dipped twenty feet deep in an ocean on Earth.
Yecch.
I suppose you can't get good cigarettes if you can't get the bounties after all.
Jet was sleeping at the pilot seat. No argument there. Not when he's sleeping. He'd kill you if he woke up before we got to Ganymede. Well, I suppose he'd kill whoever he saw first. Good thing he usually just sees himself in the windshield most of the time.
And then there was this creature in front of me. Arrogant and careless, almost to the point of spoiled.
What? Where'd Ein come from? Shoo, boy!
Back to what I was saying. Faye Valentine. You really need to start working around here and paying your dues. You ain't gonna last long with just those looks, and we haven't caught a bounty for about a week now, and I'm gettin' kinda hungry.
Man, this cigarette really sucks. What brand is this? Red Apple?
"You don't like that cigarette do you?" she said.
"It sucks."
I slumped forward a little. Maybe my lungs weren't in position to enjoy the nicotine.
"Why don't you like the cigarette?"
"Because it tastes like the ocean."
"You don't like the taste of the ocean?"
"Not when it's in my cigarette."
"You sure don't know like it when things don't come out the way you want 'em to, do ya?"
"True. But I've had to deal with it."
"Oh?"
"If I didn't, I wouldn't be smoking Red Apples right now. Sleepin' probably."
I'm really bored as hell right now. Though most people wouldn't find hell very boring. Painful and full of agony is more like it, but at least they keep busy. Something is better than nothing at all.
"How about some twenty-one?" she said.
I sat there for a second. I'm six over twenty-one.
Bust!
"Fine."
She dealt me some cold cards. Her eyes told me so. She wasn't cheating at least - she wouldn't cheat against me. She knew that I knew all the tricks in the book. In fact, I wrote that book. Too bad Jet didn't buy a copy, and he's not gettin' one for Christmas.
She had a king, and I had twelve. That's about the worst position to be in, and she knew it.
"Well, big boy, are you gonna hit or stay?" she said.
"Hit me."
She dealt me a nine. Woohoo! A twenty-one. She grumbled. Then I grumbled.
"Too bad it's a push though." I said as she flipped over the other card.
A six. The next one was a five.
"How'd you know?" she said.
I've played with Jet so many times with that same deck of cards that I knew every one of them just by looking at the back.
I shrugged.
"Lucky guess."
"You're not lucky."
She could tell, huh?
"I spent most of my luck, but I still have some left y'know."
"Oh?"
"Jet thinks I'm just blessed by the devil. He doesn't believe in luck."
"What does he believe in then?"
"Right now? I'm guessing a few meals at Ganymede, and a thirty million woolong spaceship.
When he's awake, probably a few cigarettes."
She looked bored. Join the club.
"Does that cigarette still taste like the ocean?"
"It tastes like a lake now."
Actually, it tasted more like a car full of assholes.
"Yeah? You know, cigarettes probably caused all the problems in your life."
"Good thing it's the solution to all of 'em too."
I stood up. I had to stretch. If I let my body get too idle, I'll die before we land.
"Where're you goin'?" she said.
"Heaven."
I strode over to the couch and slept.