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PARTISAN REVIEW
luck, I was discovering.
"Is he crooked?" I asked.
"Like a three dollar bill, that's all. If the ladies don't get yah, the cards
will.
He marks 'em, you know, once he's got the sucker hooked."
I smiled, patted his shoulder, wondering if Bernie was such a sucker.
Throughout the morning I labored industriously to dean up some of the
longest lingering piles and bulging cartons, and made some decent headway.
(Despite taking a small break when I came upon a Heritage Press
Moby
Dick
and couldn't resist peering at the marvelous drawings.) What would all
my dusty novels do without me? In the afternoon, Bernie came around,
asked how I had done, and I said "Won."
lighting a cigarette, he continued. "Oh yeah, how much?"
I announced the sum.
He kept the flame burning and looked at me. "You putting me on?"
When I assured him I wasn't, he took hold of my arm, and said, "So
I'm the one who should be taking lessons, huh?" Suddenly speaking with new
respect, he said, "You know, I had you pegged for a deadbeat, an egghead in
the making, but you're turning out okay, really okay." A broad smile ap–
peared. "Oh, I wish I had been there to see their mugs when you bid them
'adieu.' I never got that lucky. Hey, what're you gonna do with that kind of
loot? Wanna try to go for broke with the ponies on Tuesday night?"
"Thanks, Bern, I have some other plans for it." I'd pass along Mosey's
warning next week sometime.
Meanwhile, the next week, in March, I began to take care of those
plans. On Monday, on the way to work, I stopped to pick up my new type–
writer. A battleship gray color, dean as a whistle with a new ribbon too, with
a speckled gray carrying case, it was a sight and feel to behold, and I took to
it like a farmboy getting a new mare.
Naturally I tried it out right off, right there on Mosey's table; the keys
were high and separate, and the print elite, my favorite. Mosey shook my
hand and said, "IfJackson helped to buy that for you, it should type extra
sweet, man." Later, the other boys came around, and admired it too.
On the subway home that evening, I guarded it carefully, my hands or
legs feeling it at every moment. At the entrance to my apartment building,
Steven Werter noticed it immediately, and said, "Looks new, a present for
your birthday?"
I smiled, sort of. "A present, from myself to myself."
His eyes widened, and he half nodded, "Didn't know you earned that
kind of dough at a
bookstore."
My mother was near amazed, and skeptical too. Did I really need it?
Though she conceded, "It's your money, though. Did you get a guarantee?"
