The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

shook it, and a penny dropped onto the table top. He gave the audience his
trademarked grin, and there was nervous laughter, as if most people didn’t get
the joke.
“‘There’s a fortune written on it,’ he told them. ‘It says: You will find true love
and get laid.’
“That got a laugh, and, you know, the prediction came true, at least in part.
There was a groupie in the audience, who used Joe’s shtick to bait him…
literally. She laid out a trail of pennies, up a flight of stairs, along a corridor, and
under the door of her room. The door was unlocked. And that, to make a steamy
story short, is how Joe Eisenberg lost his virginity, at the age of twenty-seven.
Because the gods had revealed that he would, he told me afterward.
“‘I’m sure glad I picked up that penny,’ he said.
“I think he used his silliness to hide social awkwardness. And somewhere
along the line, all this very much ceased to be amusing.
“He found I don’t know how many pennies during the remainder of the
convention, and on the train ride back. The way he pounced on them told me that
the totally overdone gag was turning into a mania. It was a wonder he didn’t
walk right into people. He was always scanning the floor, looking for pennies.
“‘Awwright! Enough of this!’ I told him in my best Graham Chapman-as-a-
British-Army-officer voice. This has got to stop. It’s getting silly.’
“‘I only wish it were, Jimbo,’ he said softly, then turned to stare out the train
window.
“It was early November when he came into my office one evening late with a
stack of new artwork. Things were going badly for me by then, for all Joe’s stuff
sold better than anything else I had. The mid-’70s were bad times for
undergrounds. Sex and obscenity had lost a good deal of their novelty, and the
Moron Majority was after us. Head shops were closing, and with them went
much of the distribution. Books that had sold 75,000 copies five years previously
were now lucky to do 20,000. And so I was living in that dingy office above the
record store on South Street. My suburban apartment, and my wife-Carol, had
gone in the course of belt-tightening.
“I was working late with some bills, and Joe knew I’d be there. He had a key
and he just came in. I hardly glanced up. Just as he stepped through the door my
Selectric jammed and began making a hideous rattle.
“Somehow he was expecting it. Joe dropped his artwork on a chair and ran to
my desk, leaning over my shoulder, reaching into my typewriter with the longest
pair of tweezers I have ever laid eyes on, and extracted—you don’t have to guess