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“What kind of threat is that? This is getting out of hand. Do you mean my daughters?”

“I’m not going to a collection agency. You don’t know what you’re into. Or who I am. Wake up!”

I often said “Wake up!” to myself, and many people also have cried, “Wake, wake!” As if I had a dozen eyes, and stubbornly kept them sealed. “Ye have eyes and see not.” This, of course, was absolutely true.

Cantabile was still speaking. I heard him say, “So, go and ask George Swiebel what to do. He gave you the advice. He, like, smashed your car.”

“Let’s stop all this. I want to settle.”

“No settle. Pay. Make good the check. The full amount. And cash. No money orders, no cashier’s check, no more fucking around. Cash. I’ll call you later. We’ll make a date. I want to see you.”

“When?”

“Never mind when. You stick by the telephone till I call.”

Next instant I heard the interminable universal electronic miaow of the phone. And I was desperate. I had to tell what had happened. I needed to consult.

A sure sign of distress: telephone numbers stormed through my head—area codes, digits. I must telephone someone. The first person I called was George Swiebel, of course; I had to tell him what had happened. I also had to warn him. Cantabile might attack him, too. But George was out with a crew. They were pouring a concrete footing somewhere, said Sharon, his secretary. George, before he became a businessman, was, as I have said, an actor. He started out in the Federal Theater. Afterward he was a radio announcer. He had tried television and Hollywood as well. Among business people he spoke of his show-business experience. He knew his Ibsen and his Brecht and he often flew to Minneapolis to see plays at the Guthrie Theatre. In South Chicago he was identified with Bohemia and the Arts, with creativity, with imagination. And he was vital, generous, had an open nature. He was a good guy. People formed strong attachments to him. Look at this little Sharon, his secretary. She was a hillbilly, dwarfish and queer-faced, and looked like Mammy Yokum in the funnies. Yet George was her brother, her doctor, her priest, her tribe. She had, as it were, surveyed South Chicago and found only one man there, George Swiebel. When I spoke to her, I had enough presence of mind to dissemble, for if I had told Sharon how shocking things were she would not have given George the message. George’s average day, as he and his people saw it, was one crisis after another. Her job was to protect him. “Ask George to call me,” I said. I hung up thinking of the crisis-outlook in the USA, a legacy from old frontier times, etcetera. I thought these things from force of habit. Just because your soul is being torn to pieces doesn’t mean that you stop analyzing the phenomena.

I restrained my real desire, which was to scream. I recognized that I would have to recompose myself unassisted. I didn’t dial Renata. Renata is not especially good at giving consolation over the phone. You have to get it from her in person.

Now I had Cantabile’s ring to wait for. And the police as well. I had to explain to Murra the CPA that I wouldn’t be coming in. He’d charge me for the hour anyway, after the manner of psychiatrists and other specialists. That afternoon I was to have taken my small daughters Lish and Mary to their piano teacher. For, as the Gulbransen Piano Co. used to say on the brick walls of Chicago, “The richest child is poor without a musical education.” And mine were rich man’s daughters, and it would be a disaster if they grew up unable to play “Fur Elise” and the “Happy Farmer.”

I had to recover my calm. Seeking stability, I did the one Yoga exercise I know. I took the small change and the keys out of my pockets, I removed my shoes, took a position on the floor, advancing my toes, and, with a flip, I stood on my head. My loveliest of machines, my silver Mercedes 280, my gem, my love-offering, stood mutilated in the street. Two thousand dollars’ worth of bodywork would never restore the original smoothness of the metal skin. The headlights were crushed