people walk through the door.”
Eric just grinned. “Well, I know I’m going to put my plastic through a workout here on a regular basis. Does this happen often?”
“Often enough,” the middle-aged fellow said, with a wink. “Yesterday it was someone who collects movie scores—she was funny, kept saying, ‘My God! My God!’ until I thought the Big Guy was going to show up to find out why she was calling on Him. Today it’s you. Tomorrow, probably no one unusual, but next week, maybe an opera buff. The heavy hitters are usually from out of town; the rest of us know we don’t have to blow all our savings at once.”
If that was a subtle inquiry, Eric didn’t answer it quite as the fellow expected. “I just took the plunge on a CD player—I resisted for a long, long time; now that I’m a convert, I put the vinyl in storage and gave away the tapes, and I’m replacing everything with CDs. And picking up stuff I didn’t know was around.”
The clerk coughed, but didn’t comment; it was a Centurion AmEx card on the register.
He probably sees a lot of heavy rollers in here.
“Win the lottery?” the clerk asked instead, as the total on the register continued to mount.
Eric grinned, since that was his original cover story. “Actually,” he said,