TWO MORNING MONOLOGUES
235
his twelve hours or the girl's staggered twelve-eight on the books
and four around the block, I hear. Impossible way to live.
Thanks, bud, not for me. We couldn't get along without them,
whereas we could get along without me. Who picks us out? Who
decides or what decides my place and their place? But anyway,
not for me. To get around it counts. Slipping through. So far even
in the Grand National for peacetime privates. But that I expected.
It would have been funny to come out a loser with so many fall
guys
in.
I don' t think they'll get to me, either.
If
they do it's up to
me to cover all the angles. There's a way through the cracks. This
city, this country, is full of them and it's up to people like me to
find a way through them.
You have to be able to recognize them.
If
you see them that
way it breaks into spades, hearts. Thirteen in even tricks. What
counts is reading them properly. You have to be on the spot when
the kiss off comes, connect the pair, hit the straight, fill in when
the right one snaps up. But it's the other way around too, in the
same coin, when planes collide in all the room in the world, or you
step out to meet the train front on, or the bullet in the field. A good
example is that couple necking in Bucharest in their Ford when the
skyscraper fell.
The point is, then-the big point-is there a way around?
Often it seems there is and just as often not. It gives you the squeeze
and makes you pant after the ten pinned under your vest. The regu·
lar ones feel that way sometimes, but the more important for the
game are Mamas on their way to shop. The Twenty-six girls them–
selves are sometimes bit. I've known that to happen. And the kids
with their baseball pools.
When you come to it there's a lot that has to do with what
remains of it from childhood. Yes, far as the big dough may seem
from it. And not only tossing pennies and coupons. Kids think
they can control the world. Walk from one side of the room to
the other and a bell will ring; throw a stone at the sky and wait for
it to rain. Next time it will rain. I remember that. Step on the
crack in the sidewalk and watch out. I used to watch others, angry
with those who didn't look and stepped where they shouldn't upset–
ting the whole thing. What else. Coins on the bed when you're
sick. Arrange them on the quilt and they fall out. In fives, threes in
