Blood Pressure - Damon Runyon

Theme: Queen’s Quorum Titles

Story: Blood Pressure

Author: Damon Runyon

Source: Guys & Dolls

The nameless narrator of this story has been warned by the doctor that his blood pressure is way beyond normal and hence should avoid all excitement. Just when he is thinking that it wouldn’t be too difficult not to get excited, he bumps into Rusty Charley, the hardest man in the world and the last guy that anyone would want to meet. Rusty is a big man who thinks nothing of knocking people down, a man who would shoot down people if he doesn’t like the way they wear their hats. On top of that Rusty is broke! Rusty requests our Guy to accompany him to Nathan Detroit’s crap game, a seedy place where our guy can hardly suppress his excitement! But he cannot say no to Rusty.

And hence starts a very funny and a nerve racking adventure for our narrator: accompanying Rusty to a crap game where everybody knows that Rusty is cheating but no one dares to question him, followed by a game of stuss in another seedy place called Ikey The Pig’s, knocking the taxi driver out and driving away with his taxi, followed by a visit to a joint called Bohemian club - the last place that anyone would go when there is positively no other place in town open, provoking the coppers in the Bohemian club leading to a big fisticuff with Rusty emerging victorious and so on. Will our narrator live to see another day? Will his blood pressure hold up amidst all the excitement that he can’t handle? He very shortly ends up with his doctor again ….