TAKE A NUMBER, TAKE
J
SEAT
65
magazine and she knew I was gone for keeps, if I had gone into
the trucking racket with my cousin, if even I was the sort of
writer Harold Bell Wright is, Edgar Guest, for that matter,
if
I
was a writer like 0. 0. Mcintire or Hergesheimer or Cabell,
if,-that's the way it's got me, you see, because what use have
I for crap like that
I
What the hell, none of this is what I
want, it's just this lousy dump, that's what's the matter with
me, this joint makes me think of the old lady back home waiting
for me to bring in the lousy grocery ticket, makes me think of
the stale old joke, still good for an extra quiver, it seems, one
boy does another boy a good deed. Says the first boy, Oh that's
all right, when I'm old and grey and sixty, you can repay me
with a nickel for a cup of coffee and, I'll be down on the corner
next door to the Park Plaza Hotel when you roll by in your
nineteen cylinder limousine. The trouble with me is, you see,
I'm trying to stave off kissing my Visitation's arse, it's got me
goofy.
We-e-ell, trying to scare up an answer,
which,
man or
woman? thinking What the hell, ain't they all alike, thinking
If
I take the one side or the other, that's chauvinism, when
whoa
I
who's this coming across the floor !-Excuse me, to Moon–
face, and up and in a flash I'm in front of her. She can't get
away, she stops.
Hello, Miss More, I greet her. I was hoping you would
come out.
You were? How nice, she tells me.-That's what she says
but what she means is Nuts to you, on account of she knows that
I know that she knows I know there's only one reason she
popped out of her cubby-hole and it's plain law of average, phew I
she had to cotne out sometime anyway. What can I do for you,
Fred, says she.
\Vell, you see, I had an appointment yesterday to see you
today at ten o'clock. It's eleven fifteen now, and-
Well, take a seat, Fred, I'll see what I can do.
Back to the galleys again. Moonface asks is she, and I
say, yes, she is, that's the Girl of my Economic Dreams. Did
you look at her feet, I ask him. He says No, he wasn't even
looking at her puss. Which is a pity in a way, she has such big
feet, so much bigger than the other big thing he was looking at.
-Well, says he, what do you tink, don't you tink a man's bet–
ter'n a woman?
Well, like I said before, I don't know. Sometimes he is,
