I stared at the dice and my heart dropped below the floor boards. Snake eyes. Inanely, my first thought was that they didn't look like the eyes of any snake I had ever seen. Then the full impact of my dice roll hit me. A two. The lowest roll possible.

Eddie cackled slightly. I turned my head toward him, but my eyes remained locked on the dice. Two little white cubes, both of them staring at the ceiling with little black dots. Those two little cubes had just caused my downfall.

"C'mon now, pay up," growled Eddie impatiently. He never was patient about anything. I had barely managed to squeeze out of his money-grabbing hands, only to be betrayed by dumb luck. Those stupid dice. All I needed was a three, and I would have been home free. But no. I had lost all my luck. I ...

Again, Eddie cut into my thoughts.

"Where's my money?" he hissed.

I stared at him, my mind churning with ideas, but not practical ones. His curly black hair, his thin face, his brown eyes; none of it looked as comical as I generally thought it did. Casually, he reached out, picked up the little hand gun lying on the table, and began to turn it in his hands. The light above glinted off the dull metal barrel of the weapon. I could imagine the smoke curling out of the black hole at the end of the revolver, right after Eddie shot me -

I broke off that train of thought hurriedly. My friends have always said my imagination is too vivid for its own good. In an effort to look productive, I pulled out what little money I had and rifled through it.

Twenty-six dollars. Nowhere near the $2000 bucks I needed. Eddie watched me and my bills with slit eyes, leaning back in his chair.

"It doesn't look like you have enough," he remarked casually.

"I ... I don't." I concentrated on the table top. The dark grain of the wood was a boring sight, and I switched my gaze to the ceiling. The light shone directly above the oval table. It was a little copper thing, sort of a poor man's chandelier, with plastic tubes and light bulbs instead of candles. Less dangerous and more reliable, but candles would look classier.

I forcibly dragged my mind back to my situation. Eddie was grinning, like a shark as the old clich" goes, with all his great white teeth shining.

"You are bankrupt," he informed me, enunciating each word with careful precision. Lazily he picked up the wad of bills on the table, the ones I had just given him a few minutes before, and began flipping through them slowly, counting.

"The saying goes, ABetter luck next time,' but for you, there won't be a next time. I've won this game."

"I guess you have," I replied mechanically; and then something in my mind clicked and my spirit was lifted, like the feeling you get when you wake up from a nightmare.

"Ah, well, that's the way the die rolls," I said.

"You don't sound too upset," Eddie murmured. He sounded disappointed.

"I'm not," I answered nonchalantly. Pushing back my chair and standing, I tossed my few remaining pastel dollars onto the table, next to Eddie's miniature pewter gun.

"Games don't matter much to me, and landing on Boardwalk is how I usually lose anyway. And I'm used to losing at Monopoly." 1