Jackson wasn't a gambler. He wasn't a brawler, and he hated the sight of blood. The crowd around the ring shoved him first left, then right. He was almost six feet tall, but that didn't help. The crowd was mostly men, big men, and he was a few rows back from the mass of sweaty bodies that had managed to get close to the ring to see the fight. Everyone around him was standing as tall as they could to catch a glimpse of the action, and every time someone in front would move, the whole crowd would lurch to the side for a better view. God damn Marcus. I don't know why I even hung out with him. Jackson cursed his new and soon to be ex-friend. Jackson did know why, though. A new city, a new life, it was getting lonely. College was turning out to be, although intellectually interesting, a little hard to fit into. Jackson had always been the kind of person to prefer books to company, and being dropped into the middle of a dorm full of partying kids hadn't done him any favors. Marcus had seemed different. A little older. He wasn't drunk every night, and Jackson had appreciated that. When they'd both been invited to yet another keg-and-bottle party, Jackson had declined, and Marcus had suggested going out and doing something different. He hadn't said what, but Jackson had figured anything was better than drunken college freshmen. Now he wondered if he'd been right. The crowd lurched again. Jackson felt almost sea-sick. There wasn't any easy way out of the crowd. It was probably easier to just wait it out a bit. A monitor on one side of the room showed the action in the ring for those who couldn't see it directly. He made the mistake of looking up at it, only to see one of the men in the ring land a blow on the other that drew blood. His stomach turned. Another lurch from the crowd, and Jackson was pushed further around the ring. A man sat at a table, off to the side. He wore an expression of ... Jackson couldn't tell if it was amusement or malice, actually. The table was an old card table, the kind made of wood and topped with green leather, and it looked like real leather, not the cheap vinyl that his grandmother's tables had when she had friend over to play bridge. He had a big leatherbound book and a wooden cash-box. Jackson couldn't place what was strange about the man at first, until he realized that the crowd was wearing heavy metal band T-shirts and ones advertising their favorite cheap alcohol, and the man was wearing a suit. A sports jacket hung on a brass coat rack behind him, and a bowler hat sat on top. He wasn't outside the crowd, exactly -- the table was surrounded by onlookers -- but the man sat calmly, but he looked pensive, like he was the eye of the storm, not beside the chaos but firmly in the middle of it. The crowd lurched again and Jackson was pressed up near the little table. The man looked up at him. "Care to make a bet, son?" "I'm not really the betting type." "Everyone's a betting type if you motivate them properly. What'll you bet on?" Another man shoved in to the space around the table and tossed down a fifty. "On Davis." The man took the crumpled up bill and flattened it deftly, and tucked it into the box, then made a mark in the book. The bettor was gone already. "Maybe you'd like to bet on the weather tomorrow?" "No, thank you." "Or that you're the smartest person here?" The man had an intensity that made it hard to look away, nevermind leave. Not that the crowd had any intention of letting him push back in. "No, thank you."