The Year of the Jackpot Read Online Free Page A

I would have to hurry because I could see my bus stopped two blocks down the street. I remember how
good
it felt when I finally—” She paused and looked puzzled. “But I still don’t know why.”
    “What were you thinking about just before you stood up?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Visualize the street. What was passing by? Where were your hands? Were your legs crossed or uncrossed? Was there anybody near you? What were you thinking about?”
    “Nobody was on the bench with me. I had my hands in my lap. Those characters in the mixed-up clothes were standing nearby, but I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t thinking much except that my feet hurt and I wanted to get home—and how unbearably hot and sultry the weather was. Then—” her eyes became distant—“suddenly I knew what I had to do and it was very urgent that I do it. So I stood up and I—and I—” Her voice became shrill.
    “Take it easy!” he said sharply. “Don’t do it again.”
    “Huh? Why, Mr. Breen! I wouldn’t do anything like that.”
    “Of course not. Then what happened after you undressed?”
    “Why, you put your raincoat around me and you know the rest.” She faced him. “Say Potiphar, what were you doing with a raincoat? It hasn’t rained in weeks. This is the driest, hottest rainy season in years.”
    “In sixty-eight years, to be exact.”
    “Sixty—”
    “I carry a raincoat anyhow. Just a notion of mine, but I feel that when it does rain, it’s going to rain awfully hard.” He added, “Forty days and forty nights, maybe.”
    She decided that he was being humorous and laughed.
    He went on, “Can you remember how you got the idea of undressing?”
    She swirled her glass and thought. “I simply don’t know.”
    He nodded. “That’s what I expected.”
    “I don’t understand—unless you think I’m crazy. Do you?”
    “No. I think you had to do it and could not help it and don’t know why and can’t know why.”
    “But
you
know.” She said it accusingly.
    “Maybe. At least I have some figures. Ever take any interest in statistics, Meade?”
    She shook her head. “Figures confuse me. Never mind statistics—
I want to know why I did what I did!
”
    He looked at her very soberly. “I think we’re lemmings, Meade.”
    S he looked puzzled, then horrified. “You mean those little furry mouselike creatures? The ones that—”
    “Yes. The ones that periodically make a death migration, until millions, hundreds of millions of them drown themselves in the sea. Ask a lemming why he does it. If you could get him to slow up his rush toward death, even money says he would rationalize his answer as well as any college graduate. But he does it because he has to—and so do we.”
    “That’s a horrid idea, Potiphar.”
    “Maybe. Come here, Meade. I’ll show you figures that confuse me, too.” He went to his desk and opened a drawer, took out a packet of cards. “Here’s one. Two weeks ago, a man sues an entire state legislature for alienation of his wife’s affection—and the judge lets the suit be tried. Or this one—a patent application for a device to lay the globe over on its side and warm up the arctic regions. Patent denied, but the inventor took in over three hundred thousand dollars in down payments on North Pole real estate before the postal authorities stepped in. Now he’s fighting the case and it looks as if he might win. And here—prominent bishop proposes applied courses in the so-called facts of life in high schools.”
    He put the card away hastily. “Here’s a dilly—a bill introduced in the Alabama lower house to repeal the laws of atomic energy. Not the present statutes, but the natural laws concerning nuclear physics: the wording makes that plain.” He shrugged. “How silly can you get?”
    “They’re crazy.”
    “No, Meade. One like that might be crazy; a lot of them becomes a lemming death march. No, don’t object—I’ve plotted them on a curve. The last time we had