January 23, 2006
-
The Case
An entry suggested by today’s New York Times story by Tom Zeller Jr., A Million Little Skeptics:From The Hustler, by Walter Tevis:
The only light in the room was from the lamp over the couch where she was reading.
He looked at her face. She was very
drunk. Her eyes were swollen, pink at the corners. “What’s
the book?” he said, trying to make his voice conversational. But it
sounded loud in the room, and hard.
She blinked up at him, smiled sleepily, and said nothing.
“What’s the book?” His voice had an edge now.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s Kierkegaard. Soren
Kierkegaard.” She pushed her legs out straight on the couch,
stretching her feet. Her skirt fell back a few inches from her
knees. He looked away.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Well, I don’t exactly know, myself.” Her voice was soft and thick.
He turned his face away from her again, not knowing
what he was angry with. “What does that mean, you don’t know,
yourself?”
She blinked at him. “It means, Eddie, that I
don’t exactly know what the book is about. Somebody told me to
read it, once, and that’s what I’m doing. Reading it.”
He looked at her, tried to grin at her– the old,
meaningless, automatic grin, the grin that made everybody like him–
but he could not. “That’s great,” he said, and it came out with
more irritation than he had intended.
She closed the book, tucked it beside her on the
couch. “I guess this isn’t your night, Eddie. Why don’t we
have a drink?”
“No.” He did not like that, did not want her
being nice to him, forgiving. Nor did he want a drink.
Her smile, her drunk, amused smile, did not
change. “Then let’s talk about something else,” she said.
“What about that case you have? What’s in it?” Her voice
was not prying, only friendly. “Pencils?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Pencils.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly. Her voice seemed thick. “What’s in it, Eddie?”
“Figure it out yourself.” He tossed the case on the couch.Related material:
Soren Kierkegaard on necessity and possibility
in The Sickness Unto Death, Chapter 3,
the Baseball Almanac,
and this morning’s entry, “Natural Hustler.”
