MEAN, MAXIMUM, MINIMUM
331
"It's practical!" Normal insists passionately; "you don't take
it seriously, but I take it seriously. Where there are so many bil–
lions of dollars in Chicago, couldn't we come into $10 a week?
But when you try to
earn
it, you soon have to try to make $18 or
you're out. And where do you stop? Where do you stop? Once I
thought if I had $10 a week, I'd be independent; I wouldn't know
what to spend it on. But by the time I was making $18 a week I
was thinking in terms of $35."
"Where do you stop?"
"The only thing is to go back to what you wanted when you
were little."
"Hal" thinks Liv's little brother in the doorway grinning,
"that's what
he
thinks!"
"-a little regular income; the main thing is to be regular, so
you know where you stand. I'd be satisfied with $8."
"If
there was ten of us, we could live on $5."
"Where do you stop? Where do you stop?"
Liv has planned ·out the daily routine: "Our daily routine
could be as follows: in the morning a game of ball. I could be
captain of one team and Norm of the other. Mter lunch some
reading...."
He slips into the routine of a boys' camp he went to, and these
are his juster proportions. (It was there he wore the yellow pants.)
"... In the afternoon a little scrub-ball until the big game
about four. At night you sit around and talk just like we're doing
now. Every Sunday we go to see the Cubs or White Sox, whichever
is
at home." "I think we ought to do a little socially useful work
just to make you feel right," says Normal; "two nights a week I'm
willing to canvass for Labor's Non-Partisan League." "How many
young men in 1937, dissatisfied with their jobs, are thinking of a
life of the Golden Mean!"
Robber gets to his feet. "What about women?" says he.
"I knew you'd start that!" Normal cries. There follow the
many dirty jokes. Anyway some women have sense and might even
become Utopians. "Oh oh, trouble."
"Generally speaking," says Liv, "to be honest with ourselves,
we go with girls just for screwing and not for companionship or
talking, and they can't play ball."
"Well Abyssinia," says Robber, "I have a date."
