to get at. I know it’s too much for anybody.”

“Everything you say is negative.”

“Then what is it you’re trying to do?”

“Tell him.”

“No, you tell him.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said and laughed. I had on Carlo’s hat. I pulled it down over my eyes. “I want to sleep,” I said.

“Poor Sal always wants to sleep.” I kept quiet. They started in again. “When you borrowed that nickel to make up the check for the chicken-fried steaks—”

“No, man, the chili! Remember, the Texas Star?”

“I was mixing it with Tuesday. When you borrowed that nickel you said, now listen, you said, ‘Carlo, this is the last time I’ll impose on you,’ as if, and really, you meant that I had agreed with you about no more imposing.”

“No, no, no, I didn’t mean that—you harken back now if you will, my dear fellow, to the night Marylou was crying in the room, and when, turning to you and indicating by my extra added sincerity of tone which we both knew was contrived but had its intention, that is, by my play-acting I showed that—But wait, that isn’t it.”

“Of course that isn’t it! Because you forget that—But I’ll stop accusing you. Yes is what I said ...” And on, on into the night they talked like this. At dawn I looked up. They were tying up the last of the morning’s matters. “When I said to you that I had to sleep because of Marylou, that is, seeing her this morning at ten, I didn’t bring my peremptory tone to bear in regard to what you’d just said about the unnecessariness of sleep but only, only, mind you, because of the fact that I absolutely, simply, purely and without any whatevers have to sleep now, I mean, man, my eyes are closing, they’re redhot, sore, tired, beat ...”

“Ah, child,” said Carlo.

“We’ll just have to sleep now. Let’s stop the machine.”

“You can’t stop the machine!” yelled Carlo at the top of his voice. The first birds sang.

“Now, when I raise my hand,” said Dean, “we’ll stop talking, we’ll both understand purely and without any hassle that we are simply stopping talking, and we’ll just sleep.”

“You can’t stop the machine like that.”

“Stop the machine,” I said. They looked at me.

“He’s been awake all this time, listening. What were you thinking, Sal?” I told them that I was thinking they were very amazing maniacs and that I had spent the whole night listening to them like a man watching the mechanism of a watch that reached clear to the top of Berthoud Pass and yet was made with the smallest works of the most delicate watch in the world. They smiled. I pointed my finger at them and said, “If you keep this up you’ll both go crazy, but let me know what happens as you go along.”

I walked out and took a trolley to my apartment, and Carlo Marx’s papier-mâçhé mountains grew red as the great sun rose from the eastward plains.

9

In the evening I was involved in that trek to the mountains and didn’t see Dean or Carlo for five days. Babe Rawlins had the use of her employer’s car for the weekend. We brought suits and hung them on the car windows and took off for Central City, Ray Rawlins driving, Tim Gray lounging in the back, and Babe up front. It was my first view of the interior of the Rockies. Central City is an old mining town that was once called the Richest Square Mile in the World, where a veritable shelf of silver had been found by the old buzzards who roamed the hills. They grew wealthy overnight and had a beautiful little opera house built in the midst of their shacks on the steep slope. Lillian Russell had come there, and opera stars from Europe. Then Central City became a ghost town, till the energetic Chamber of Commerce types of the new West decided to revive the place. They polished up the opera house, and every summer stars from the Metropolitan came out and performed. It was a big vacation for everybody. Tourists came from everywhere, even Hollywood stars. We drove up the mountain and found the narrow streets chock full of chichi tourists. I thought of Major’s Sam, and Major was right. Major himself was there, turning on his big social smile to everybody and ooh-ing and aah-ing most sincerely over everything. “Sal,” he cried, clutching my arm, “just look at this old town. Think how it was a