She waited for a roll of thunder at sea to fade away. "I just don't want you mad, is all. I just don't want anything bad to happen, promise me."
The wind, now warm, now cool, blew along the pier. There was a smell of rain in the wind. The clock ticked. Aimee began to perspire heavily, watching the cards move and move. Distantly, you could hear targets being hit and the sound of the pistols at the shooting gallery.
And then, there he was.
Waddling along the lonely concourse, under the insect bulbs, his face twisted and dark, every movement an effort. From a long way down the pier he came, with Aimee watching. She wanted to say to him. This is your last night, the last time you'll have to embarrass yourself by coming here, the last time you'll have to put up with being watched by Ralph, even in secret. She wished she could cry out and laugh and say it right in front of Ralph. But she said nothing.
"Hello, hello!" shouted Ralph. "It's free, on the house, tonight! Special for old customers!"
The Dwarf looked up, startled, his little black eyes darting and swimming in confusion. His mouth formed the word thanks and he turned, one hand to his neck, pulling his tiny lapels tight up about his convulsing throat, the other hand clenching the silver dime secretly. Looking back, he gave a little nod, and then scores of dozens of compressed and tortured faces, burnt a strange dark color by the lights, wandered in the glass corridors.
"Ralph," Aimee took his elbow. "What's going on?"
He grinned. "I'm being benevolent, Aimee, benevolent.
"Ralph," she said.
"Sh," he said. "Listen."
They waited in the booth in the long warm silence.
Then, a long way off, muffled, there was a scream.
"Ralph!" said Aimee.
"Listen, listen!" he said.
There was another scream, and another and still another, and a threshing and a pounding and a breaking, a rushing around and through the maze. There, there, wildly colliding and richocheting, from mirror to mirror, shrieking hysterically and sobbing, tears on his face, mouth gasped open, came Mr. Bigelow. He fell out in the blazing night air, glanced about wildly, wailed, and ran off down the pier.
"Ralph, what happened?"
Ralph sat laughing and slapping at his thighs.
She slapped his face. "What'd you do?"
He didn't quite stop laughing. "Come on. I'll show you!"
And then she was in the maze, rushed from white-hot mirror to mirror, seeing her lipstick all red fire a thousand times repeated on down a burning silver cavern where strange hysterical women much like herself followed a quick-moving, smiling man. "Come on!" he cried. And they broke free into a dust-smelling tiny room.
