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Show 98 Jewel is still playing roulette when Hall begins walking toward her, as though it were her sentence. She is inside herself. Hall wonders if she is with her mother. Hall thinks about all the threads what hold sanity on. In any of us. He remembers his words: If I had nerve, I would light myself on fire every day for a living. "Jewel." Hall has to say it a second time - "Jewel" - before anything reaches her mind. "... You," she says. All Hall can do is nod. Jewel gets up. She begins, with Hall, to walk, not a word of conversation, across the carpet of the casino. "Your chips," Hall says and turns back. Jewel returns and gets them. "Do I thank you?" she asks. They are walking again. Hall is making a laughing sound. "Probably not." He feels her arm brush his and feels the brush like an electrical web. "I'm fairly angry," Jewel says. Hunt thinks: Her anger has an intention beyond Leah's. "Yeah," Hall replies. Then, suddenly, someone from a craps table, thunders into them, knocking Jewel down, giving Hall a head shot when Hall grabs his shirt. "Oh, shit; there's blood," Jewel says to Hall, both of them on the diamond-patterned carpet. Hall touches his lip. The man is gone. They go outside. The sun is thick with silence on the tennis courts. |