"The only sick thing about me is my bank account," I grinned, relishing her dark, romantic quality. "I need the dough, Shari. I've got a thesis to finish if I ever want to get a job teaching." Her thick eyebrows fluttered upward, a danger signal I had learned to look for. "That's a childish rationalization, Tex," she said with a lot more sharpness than I had expected. "There are certainly other ways to get money!" "So I'm not as smart as you," I told her. "Smart?" She didn't think I was tracking. "I wasn't as shrewd as you were in picking my parents," I said. "Mine never had much, and left me less than that when they died." She threw her spoon to the table. "I'll remind you of how silly these remarks sound, after you've hit a losing streak," she told me. I laughed at that one. "I don't lose, Shari," I said. "And I don't intend to." Her lashes veiled her violet eyes as she smiled and said more quietly, "Then you are in even worse trouble than I thought. I hear a lot about what happens to these strange people who never lose at cards or at dice or at roulette. Aren't you afraid of winding up in the gutter with your throat slit? Isn't that what happens to people with psi powers who gamble?" she insisted. "What's your trick, Tex? Do you stack the deck with telekinesis, or does precognition tell you what's about to be dealt?" "That crack isn't considered very funny in Texas," I growled. "Is it any more silly for me to think you might be 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. * * * * *