RANSVESTIA

roll was a four trey which meant he was now busted again. He hadn't brought his total cash along. Each night he had brought nearly a hun- dred dollars and had lost it. He had about a hundred left at home. The rest of his savings from military service had been invested in the snappy Chevy convertible which was parked outside the gambling den.

He swore softly as her voice said: “Tough luck sir. Want more chips?"

"I think that's enough for tonight. Maybe I'll be able to do better to- morrow night. My luck has to change some time."

He got his coat from the rack and slipped into it before he opened the door to go outside. It was winter in New Orleans, and the past few days had been pretty cold. That was another phase of his bad luck. His only skill was laying concrete which requires dry. above freezing weather. Since he had been here the weather had worked against him and his finances kept dwindling because of his gambling excesses.

"If only I could have got one streak going tonight,” he grumbled as he unlocked the door of his automobile and slid in. “I have never had such a lengthy losing streak before. I guess it's time to stop when you lose better than three hundred dollars and go home broke for the third straight night!" Home was a furnished room in Gretna, across the new highway bridge from downtown New Orleans.

"I told you so," a demon within him kept saying as he drove along in the traffic one finds in New Orleans at almost any hour. “You should have stayed home and had a few beers." It was like this every time he drank, gambled and lost. He had fought against it a hundred times. It seemed that a part of himself rebelled at his continual gambling and losing.

"I won't give in tonight," he promised himself aloud. "I just won't." Even as he drove along he began to bawl himself out for losing money he couldn't bear to lose, that he couldn't afford to cast away. Before he crossed the old bridge he had reached a point he had arrived at so many times before. A masochistic inner self was demanding that he suffer for losing at dice. By the time Martin had reached the beginning of the dwelling in Gretna, his eyes were on the lookout for clothes hanging on a line. It was almost two A.M.

He turned off long before he reached the street on which he had rent- ed his room in the private home of the McGee family. The nice con-