GBH by Ted Lewis

excuse us a minute?” he says. “I just want to get Lesley a drink. I’ll be right over.”
    “Sure,” I tell him. “I’ll wait.”
    I throw a ton and leave the darts in the board so that when Eddie comes back he won’t just have to take me on trust. I pick up my drink and look at the girl as she joins Eddie at the bar.
    She’s still wearing the heavy dark glasses. And she’s stilllooking to me as though I’ve seen her before. And the irritating thing is that it’s irritating me.
    Jackie draws her a half of lager and I watch Eddie explain to her that he’s just having a game of arrows. Perhaps he thinks she wouldn’t have managed to guess that all by herself.
    Then Eddie walks back to me, the girl a few yards behind him. She sits down on one of the wall seats.
    “The star of the show,” Eddie says, cocking his head in her direction. “The one I was telling you about.”
    “Oh, yes. That one.”
    “I’m afraid I’ll only be able to play you best of three,” Eddie says. “She doesn’t want to leave too late.”
    “That’s all right, Eddie,” I say, taking my ton out of the board.
    The girl sits there, reading the copy of The Stage I’d clocked in her pocket earlier.
    I finish the first game on double sixteen.
    “Like another drink, Eddie?”
    “Yes.” He downs the remains of his pint. “Thanks.”
    “And the star turn?”
    “I’ll ask her.”
    Eddie walks over to her.
    “Lesley, like another half?”
    She looks up from the paper.
    “No. I’ll have a vodka and tonic.”
    “I see,” Eddie says.
    By that time I’m already on my way over to the bar. Eddie catches me up.
    “She says she’ll have a vodka and tonic. That all right?”
    “Of course it’s all right, Eddie.”
    While we’re waiting at the bar, Eddie says, “You should hear her. You really should. You can forget Elkie Brooks.”
    “Ah, but will the punters buy her, Eddie?”
    “Well, of course, for the season, she’ll give them Anita Harris. If she decides to hang around.”
    Jackie gives me the drinks and we carry them back to where the girl is sitting.
    “This one’s with Mr. Carson,” Eddie says. “Mr. Carson, this is Lesley.”
    “You found someone to play with you then,” she says to me.
    “Men or women,” I say to her. “They’re all the same to me.”
    Eddie looks puzzled.
    “A brief encounter,” I say to him. “In the arcade.”
    Eddie clocks.
    “Oh, yeah,” he says. “She loves the machines, Lesley does. She loves all the games.”

THE SMOKE
    “H EART ATTACK ,” M ICKEY SAID .
    Finally certain that Mal Wilson was dead, Mickey straightened up and stood back from the still body.
    “That’s what must have done it,” he said. “Heart attack. The old ticker gave out.”
    I looked at Mal’s features, already begun to blur into the unfamiliarity born of death.
    “Who’d have thought it?” Mickey said. “A big lad like Mal. You never can tell.”
    Mickey reached up and unscrewed the wires from the central light-socket, then began to wind them up.
    “That’s a bastard,” I said.
    “How’s that, gov’nor?” Mickey said.
    I shook my head.
    “I don’t think it was him.”
    “No, I thought that.”
    I lit a cigarette.
    “Of course, you can’t be entirely certain.”
    “Oh, no,” Mickey said. “You can’t be entirely certain.”
    He emptied the ashtray into a small paper bag and put the bag in his pocket.
    “A bastard,” I said again.
    Mickey drained scotch from the remaining glass and began polishing it with his handkerchief.
    “He was a good man,” I said. “He’ll be difficult to replace.”
    “Yeah,” Mickey said. “A good lad, Mal was.”
    I drew on my cigarette.
    “Still,” Mickey said. “No family to worry about. No steady or nothing like that.”
    “No,” I said.
    Mickey bent down, began to untie the ropes from around the chair legs and Mal’s ankles.
    “Look,” Mickey said, “if you and Mrs. Fowler want to be getting off …”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I’ll