Tune passed.
You’ve got to talk to her, dear. Coming in past midnight after she was out with God-knows-who and telling me there isn’t any use asking her to entertain at home because we’d be right on top of her because the place is so small you can’t sneeze without blowing somebody’s Lat off you’ve got to talk to her I’m going out of my mind with worry she could get hi trouble and so are all the other mothers I know the place isn’t very attractive but can’t you get it painted somehow even if you aren’t as young as you once were she’s ashamed of the place and she’s right about it being too small and the washer’s broken again and I’m not as young as I once was and I can’t keep hauling water all my life and when are we going to fix the picture window it looks horrible with a big crack right down the middle not that I blame the Elliston boy the poor kid doesn’t have any place to play trapped like a rat here hi Belle Reve like the rest of us hi chicken coops crumbling around us while we watch but they never quite fall down as long as we keep patching and patching and patching and paying and paying and paying. . . .
Tune passed.
Over the back fence (patched and peeling; leaning this way and that, inadequate to keep the children in the yard or the prowling, huge rats out): I heard of them and I saw the ads. I don’t read much these days because of my eyes but he came home with the paper, for once he wasn’t gray and tired. G.M.L. Houses, he said. Wonderful G.M.L. bubble-houses— a complete departure. He said he knew it had to come some day, a complete break with tradition the way it said hi the ad. It has something to do with contracts. They lease the machines
to the companies, I think, or something,’ and the companies build the houses for people who work for them. It gets around taxes or something. He was sure the company would lease the machines and we could get a G.M.L., but it didn’t come to anything because he doesn’t have a contract and theV just build them for their contract people. But heavens he’s lucky to have a job the way things are going; the boy’s been looking and looking and there doesn’t seem to be anything, I don’t know how we’d get by if it wasn’t for the allowance. . . .
Time passed.
Steady, pop, don’t snop your top. I swear 111 cool ya if ya give me more than a sufficiency of that cack. Me get a job? Some cack, ya old track! What have I got that a little black box hasn’t got more and better? Gimme that “fifty years with the company” once more and you’ll be flat on your bat. You get the allowance for me, don’t ya? If ya didn’t have crap in your cap you’d be a contract man and we’d be in a bubble for double instead of my being a lousy slave from Belly Rave. Me hitch to the city and look for work? Pterodactyl cackl Tell ya what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna have a big breakfast and hitch a ride to the Stadium. Good show today—Rocky Granatino, Rocky Bolderoni, Rocky Schistman and Kid Louis in a blindfold free-for-all with spiked gloves after the regular bouts. Then I’m gonna pick up a surrounded cavity and we’ll find a nice, empty dump here in Belly Rave and shove some love. Maybe the Wexley place down the street so you won’t worry about me getting lost. Old Man Wexley made contract grade last week after fifteen years in night school, so he took off for Monmouth G.M.L. City like he had a fire in his lire. I bet the beds are still made, which might come in handy. Any questions?
No; there were no questions. And the boy swaggered out across the screeching floorboards, the house trembling to his stride. The old man said, “Fifty years with the company,” and began to cry. He had been replaced last Friday by a little black box that never made mistakes, never got tired, never took a coffee break. From now on the allowance check would be tripled; as head of a family he had that coming to him. And he owned the house outright, almost. In just a few years it would be his, as soon as he cleared up the sewer assessments outstanding. I’ll sell, he schemed craftily, forgetting to cry. At