SEIZE TH E DAY
395
"No?" said Wilhelm, intensely nervous. "I think we ought to go
over to the Market. It'll be opening pretty soon."
"Oh, come on," said Tamkin. "It isn't even nine o'clock, and there
isn't much trading the first hour anyway. Things don't get hot in Chi–
cago until half-past ten, and they're an hour behind us, don't forget.
Anyway, I say lard will go up, and it will. Take my word. I've made a
study of the guilt-aggression cycle which is behind it. I ought to know
something
about that. Straighten your collar."
"But meantime," said Wilhelm, "we have taken a licking this week.
Are you sure your insight is at its best? Maybe when it isn't we should
layoff and wait."
"Don't you realize," Dr. Tamkin told him, "you can't march in a
straight line to the victory? You fluctuate toward it. From Euclid to
Newton there was straight lines. The modern age analyzes the waves.
On my own accounts, I took a licking in hides and coffee. But I have
confidence. I'm sure I'll outguess them." He gave Wilhelm a narrow
smile, friendly, calming, shrewd and wizard-like, patronizing, secret, po–
tent. He saw his fears and smiled at them. "It's something," he re–
marked, "to see how the competition factor will manifest itself in dif–
ferent individuals."
"So? Lat's go over."
"But I haven't had my breakfast yet."
"I've had mine."
"Come, have a cup of coffee."
"I wouldn't want to meet my dad." Looking through the glaM
doors Wilhelm saw that his father had left by the other exit. Wilhelm
thought, 'He didn't want to run into me, either.' He said to Dr.
Tamkin, "Okay, I'll sit with you, but let's hurry it up because I'd like
to get to the Market while there's still a place to sit. Everybody and
hIS uncle gets in ahead of you."
"I want to tell you about this boy and his dad. It's highly absorbing.
The father was a nudist. Everybody went naked in the house. Maybe
the woman found men
with
clothes attractive. Her husband didn't be–
lieve in cutting his hair, either. He practiced dentistry. In his office he
wore riding pants and a pair of boots, and he wore a green eyeshade."
"Oh, come off it," said Wilhelm.
"This is a true case history."
Without warning, Wilhelm began to laugh. He himself had no
premonition of his change of humor. His face became warm and pleasant,
and he forgot his father, his anxieties; he panted bearlike, happily,
through his teeth. "This sounds like a horse dentist. He wouldn't have
to put on pants to treat a horse. Now what else are you going to tell
me? Did the wife play the mandolin? Does the boy join the cavalry?
Oh, Tamkin, you really are a killer-diller."
"Oh, you think I'm trying to amuse you," said Tamkin. "That's
because you aren't familiar with my outlook. I deal in facts. Facts al–
ways are sensational. I'll say that a second time. Facts
always!
are sen–
sational."
