62
PARTISAN REVIEW
bastards playing strip-poker with our destinies, with How old
are you, where were you born, why, how, who was your uncle,
and \Vhere was your uncle's uncle the night two other guys were
at some other place?
God damn it, I holler, and her puss can't be uglier than
how I feel, I tell you I have an appointment for ten o'clock
I
And which, in answer to her rat-tat-tat Take a number,
her maniacal Take a seat makes me take a number, 92, makes
me take a seat, wandering blindly toward it, the mirthless and
not unfriendly laughter of many witnesses in my ears, to be
wedged between on the one side a fat sleeping woman, to the
other side a young Italian, flat moonface with staring strangely
from the middle of it, knifelike black diamond eyes, with whom
in a while I enter into conversation.
Who's your visitor, says he.
Take a number, take a seat, the one twin hollers. Can't
get away from it. Men and women, some hardfaced, some
laughing with secret laughter in them stand about, crowd onto
the ends of crowded benches, pushing those in the middle close.
45, the other twin hollers, 4
5
gets up and advances timidly
fronting majesty, I hear the question, the frightened answer.
Listen, lady, I need some coal, I figure 45 from 92 leaves
5
from
I 2
is 8,
5
from 9 is 4, I got 47 numbers to wait yet.
vVho's your visitor? Moonface again. Come to look at
him, he's a . sweet looking thing. Curly hair, skinny shoulders.
When he stands up to stretch, is short, and potbelly clowns his
prettiness. Maybe he wants to gossip, why not.
Miss More, she has big feet, I tell him.-Was it yesterday,
this place has got me goofy, was it six months ago, was it ever–
yes, you fool, it was. I walked with my sweet Christina, it was
a soft June night, she lived west of Kingsway and here it was
only Grand and miles and
mil~s
of oh-may-they-never-finish
miles to go yet, slow stars and white breasts and white arms
so close to me, Oh you silly bastard, think I, talking to myself,
looking at Moonface, she wanted to make a man of me maybe,
in return for which she maybe, you guess the rest, So what did
you have to go spouting about solidarity and oppression and
what Gene Debs once said about he wasn't free while a single
man was still in prison on a night like that for, aincha got no
sense a-tall?
I'm from the eighth street districk, says Moonface, dis is
my first time over here, I don't know who dere gonna give me.
