You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up [antikvár]

CHAPTER 1 When I came down off the midnight shift I saw there wasn't any light in the restaurant window, and that was how I knew Lois had left me. I knew it sure, just as I knew there'd be that note Dn the pillow. When I read it I didn't smash anything. I just closed up the house and went up the hill to the restaurant again. I kept hoping that there'd be a light in the window and that everything would be all right again; but there wasn't. It was all dark inside and when I looked through the window I could see from the street-light that there was a wiping-cloth on the counter where she had flung it. She hadn't bothered to clean up before she left. I kept thinking she might have cleaned up, at least, even though it didn't matter. It was a good little place. Inside I had fixed it all up with signs like: "We Don't Know Where Mom Is But We Have Pop On Ice," and "If Your Wife Can't Cook Keep Her For A Pet And Eat Here," and things like that. Outside I'd painted the front in blue and yellow squares like a chequer-board so that the truck-drivers on the way down to Dallas would always remember it,