Billy Tallent's got a set of dice in a leather pouch he keeps in his jacket.

He says they're for luck.

He says he made em himself, from sheep knuckles. Sometimes he spills them out on the table when he's working out something new. They rattle on the table. The bones break the sound of the music.

He wouldn't tell any of us where he got sheep knuckles. I asked him once, and he looked at me through that cloud of cigarette smoke and didn't say a damn thing.

Smart guy, Billy; smart and good at what he does. He's no trouble. He's a straight-up guy. He plays guitar and works hard and smokes cigarettes, and he don't do much else. Hits the bottle now and then.

You know where you stand with him.

He's got hole right through him, which makes him a little crazy sometimes. I think all of us got a hole of some kind or other.

I do.

Used to be that listening to Billy play filled that hole for me, just a bit.

You can tell when it gets to him, that hole. He writes a lot, then, and it's good stuff but messed up. And you see the dice a lot, these little curved bits of bone with letters carved in the side. I looked up what it's supposed to be: Roman numbers on four sides. I, III, IV, VI. But that's not what's on there.

He never let none of us close enough to read them, but you don't need to read exactly what's there to see the shapes are wrong.

I know what they say, his dice. I got lucky one night. Or unlucky, maybe.

We went out drinking, me and Billy. We'd been hanging out, talking, after a day in the studio. And then he frowned and said, "You ever meet Joe Dick?"

"Nah. Wish I had."

"He was a fucker," Billy said, but he said it like it meant something different. He touched the black bead he wears on a thong round his neck. "Anniversary tonight."

"What?"

"Two years since he died." He looked at me and grinned. "You wanna go get wasted?"

He laughs a lot when he's drunk, Billy does. Don't get mean, or loud, or down. I heard he used to, but I never seen it. And you get him drunk *enough*, he starts to talk. Got a lot of funny stories.

Like about the time he and Joe Dick went sledding down a hill into a parking lot, and Dick hit a pothole and flipped and cut his hand on broken bottles. "That jackass," he said when he told me that one, "you think he cared about that? He never cared about that shit. He was just pissed it was hard to light cigarettes with his hand fucked up like that." He laughed the whole time, waving his glass around. He tossed back the last of the whiskey and grinned at me. "Didn't care he couldn't *write*. Couldn't play *guitar*. Just cared about his fucking *cigarettes*." He slammed the glass on the bar and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. He chuckled and winked at me. "Bastard doesn't need his hands *now*." He tapped the black bead.

"What?"

"Nevermind, nevermind." He was still laughing.

"Hey," I said. "I heard someone stole his fucking body."

"Yeah, about a year ago. Fucked up, or what?" He lit another cigarette and waved at the bartender. "Heading home, time to pay the piper--" He reached into his pocket for his wallet and came out with the bag. The dice spilled on the bar. "Fuck!" His hands shook when he went to pick them up. Knocked one onto the floor, he was that bad.

I picked it up and took a look, turning it over to see all four marks. I, D, K, C.

D, I, C, K.

He'd marked the dice with Joe Dick's name. I laughed. Sick sense of humor he's got, Billy Tallent.

His hand closed over mine, his knuckles white. I looked up at him. He swallowed and pried my fingers open, bending back my thumb. "He didn't need his feet, either," he said, and took the bone from my hand.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, FUCK.

Sick FUCKING sense of humor.

He's never mentioned it. I've never mentioned it.

But I know. I remember the look on his face.

Used to be listening to Billy played filled the hole in me. Now I can't hear him over the sound of my own blood in my ears. The pounding in my head when he looks at me. Over the fear.

He don't treat me any different. We're buddies, he says. He still tells funny stories when he's drunk. Straight-up guy, always has been.

Yeah, you know where you stand with Billy Tallent. You just don't know what he might do to you after you're dead.

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The End.