Breakfast of Champions Page 0,25

said the driver.

Neither one of them was a veteran.

• • •

The driver got onto the subject of friends. He said it was hard for him to maintain friendships that meant anything because he was on the road most of the time. He joked about the time when he used to talk about his “best friends.” He guessed people stopped talking about best friends after they got out of junior high school.

He suggested that Trout, since Trout was in the combination aluminum storm window and screen business, had opportunities to build many lasting friendships in the course of his work. “I mean,” he said, “you get men working together day after day, putting up those windows, they get to know each other pretty well.”

“I work alone,” said Trout.

The driver was disappointed. “I assumed it would take two men to do the job.”

“Just one,” said Trout. “A weak little kid could do it without any help.”

The driver wanted Trout to have a rich social life so that he could enjoy it vicariously. “All the same,” he insisted, “you’ve got buddies you see after work. You have a few beers. You play some cards. You have some laughs.”

Trout shrugged.

“You walk down the same streets every day,” the driver told him. “You know a lot of people, and they know you, because it’s the same streets for you, day after day. You say, ‘Hello,’ and they say ‘Hello,’ back. You call them by name. They call you by name. If you’re in a real jam, they’ll help you, because you’re one of ’em. You belong. They see you every day.”

Trout didn’t want to argue about it.

• • •

Trout had forgotten the driver’s name.

Trout had a mental defect which I, too, used to suffer from. He couldn’t remember what different people in his life looked like—unless their bodies or faces were strikingly unusual.

When he lived on Cape Cod, for instance, the only person he could greet warmly and by name was Alfy Bearse, who was a one-armed albino. “Hot enough for you, Alfy?” he would say. “Where you been keeping yourself, Alfy?” he’d say. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Alfy,” he’d say.

And so on.

• • •

Now that Trout lived in Cohoes, the only person he called by name was a red-headed Cockney midget, Durling Heath. He worked in a shoe repair shop. Heath had an executive-type nameplate on his workbench, in case anybody wished to address him by name. The nameplate looked like this:

Trout would drop into the shop from time to time, and say such things as, “Who’s gonna win the World Series this year, Durling?” and “You have any idea what all the sirens were blowing about last night, Durling?” and, “You’re looking good today, Durling—where’d you get that shirt?” And so on.

Trout wondered now if his friendship with Heath was over. The last time Trout had been in the shoe repair place, saying this and that to Durling, the midget had unexpectedly screamed at him.

This is what he had screamed in his Cockney accent: “Stop bloody hounding me!”

• • •

The Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, shook Trout’s hand in a Cohoes grocery story one time. Trout had no idea who he was. As a science-fiction writer, he should have been flabbergasted to come so close to such a man. Rockefeller wasn’t merely Governor. Because of the peculiar laws in that part of the planet, Rockefeller was allowed to own vast areas of Earth’s surface, and the petroleum and other valuable minerals underneath the surface, as well. He owned or controlled more of the planet than many nations. This had been his destiny since infancy. He had been born into that cockamamie proprietorship.

“How’s it going, fella?” Governor Rockefeller asked him.

“About the same,” said Kilgore Trout.

• • •

After insisting that Trout had a rich social life, the driver pretended, again for his own gratification, that Trout had begged to know what the sex life of a transcontinental truck driver was like. Trout had begged no such thing.

“You want to know how truck drivers make out with women, right?” the driver said. “You have this idea that every driver you see is fucking up a storm from coast to coast, right?”

Trout shrugged.

The truck driver became embittered by Trout, scolded him for being so salaciously misinformed. “Let me tell you, Kilgore—” he hesitated. “That’s your name, right?”

“Yes,” said Trout. He had forgotten the driver’s name a hundred times. Every time Trout looked away from him, Trout forgot not only his name but his face,