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He lay on his back in the sweated bed listening to her and staring contentedly at the ceiling half-sleepily like after a full good rich meal, feeling the fine-boned hand that was almost transparent like Old Choy’s but smooth and utterly different in kind and texture from Old Choy’s fingering lightly on his chest and the high well lighted room gave them the secret and anonymous solitude that only a hotel room can give as outside the locked door he heard rug-muffled footsteps passing along the corridor and whispered voices coming to him faintly and keys rattling and doors slamming shut with secret finality, finality finality finality of finalities saith the Sergeant all is finality what profit hath a man of all his probabilities under the sun one probability passeth away and another probability cometh all things are full of probabilities man cannot utter it but finality abideth forever in a hotel room there is no remembrance of former probabilities neither shall there be anticipation of probabilities that are to come with those that come after thus spakest I the Sergeant who was king over Israel in Jerusalem where I dwelt in the valley of the shadow of a hotel room with my beloved who is the rose of Sharon and the lilies of the valley of the shadow of a hotel room where there is no inconsistency where there is no probabilities where there is finality remain remain O Shulamite remain remain that ye may give me to drink of the spiced wine of the juice of thy pomegranate in a hotel room where nothing is inconstant finality is all is one and is all and abideth for ever and ever and ever amen days without number while all the probabilities run down to the world yet the world is not full.

Then he was awake again back inside himself again where there were probabilities again, where there would always be probabilities again running into the world again yet never filling the world full enough to reach finality. For a minute there you thought you had found a system that would beat the game, didnt you, Warden? Yes you did, yes you did. But without having to get up to look he could feel the old world seeping steadily under the door that he had locked but forgot to calk. The world was up almost to the mattress now. The world was carrying its sheaf of probabilities under its arm like a salesman. The world was selling insurance for the insurance business that was science. Did you know the insurance business is what gives our country its financial stability? Yes, you knew that. Did you know the insurance business which is science developed and propagated the law of probabilities? Yes, you knew. Well, didnt you know that law of probabilities had as its Justinian Code the principle that there is no finality, that there is only probabilities, that constancy is only an illusion composed and perpetuated by an infinite number of inconstancies? Yes, you knew that too, but you did not believe it. Oh, you did not believe it? Just like that. You do not choose to run. Why didnt you believe it? Probably because, he thought, that is in all probability because, you were raised as a Catholic. Oh, I say, come now, really! Well, you asked me. But you are not a Catholic any more, are you? No, you are not. You stopped being a Catholic at fourteen, when you had your first piece of ass and discovered there was nothing to confess. But you surely realize, do you not, that the Song of the Shulamite is really only a metaphor of Christ’s love for the Church? The King James version tells you that explicitly; it is not a man’s love for a woman or a woman’s love for a man; surely you know that? Yes, you know that; but cant you see, you, that it is simply because of that that the law of probabilities which states that there is no constancy and therefore no finality came into being? Unfair! Unfair! Objection overruled! Strike that out! That statement is immaterial, irrelevant, and misleading, and tends to influence the witness. Objection sustained. Time’s up. Theres the bell. Take It Or Leave It gives that man Sixty-Four