While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [64]
He handed Sweeny a dime. “So you win, Mr. Sweeny.”
Sweeny was restored to health instantly. He jumped up, shook the stranger’s hand. “I knowed you was a two-kiddley man by looking at you,” he said. “You couldn’t be nothing but a two-kiddley man.”
“I just don’t know what got into me to pretend I was ever anything else,” said the stranger.
“Well,” said Sweeny cheerfully, “nobody likes to lose.” He looked at the dime one last time before pocketing it. “Anyways—you got a lesson cheap. Don’t never bet nobody down here at his own game.” He nudged the stranger, winked confidingly. “What’s your game?”
“My game?” said the stranger. He thought awhile, amiably. “Shakespeare, I suppose.”
“Now you see,” said Sweeny, “if you was to come up to me and make me a little bet about Shakespeare—” Sweeny shook his head craftily. “I just wouldn’t bet you. I wouldn’t even listen.”
Sweeny nodded and walked away.
(illustration credit 12)
MR. Z
George was the son of a country minister and the grandson of a country minister. He was in the Korean War. When that was over, he decided to become a minister, too.
He was an innocent. He wanted to help people in trouble. So he went to the University of Chicago. He didn’t study just theology. He studied sociology and psychology and anthropology, too. He went to school the year around, and, during one summer session, there was a course offered in criminology.
George didn’t know anything about criminals, so he took it.
And he was told to go to the county jail to interview a prisoner named Gloria St. Pierre Gratz. She was the wife of Bernard Gratz, who was said to be a killer for hire and a thief. Ironically, Gratz remained at large and unhunted, since nothing could be proved against him. His wife was in jail for possessing stolen goods, goods almost certainly stolen by him. She had not implicated him—neither had she given a reasonable account of where else the diamonds and fur coats might have come from. She was serving a year and a day. Her sentence was just about up when George went to see her. George was interviewing her not simply because of her criminality, but because she had an astoundingly high I.Q. She told George that she preferred to be addressed by her maiden name, the name she had used during her days as an exotic dancer. “I never learned how to answer to the name of Mrs. Gratz,” she said. “That’s nothing against Bernie,” she said. “I just never learned.” So George called her Miss St. Pierre.
He talked to Miss St. Pierre through a screen at the jail. It was the first jail George had ever been in. He had written down the bare bones of her biography in a loose-leaf notebook. Now he was double-checking the information.
“Let’s see—” he said to her, “you left high school in the middle of your junior year, and you changed your name from Francine Pefko to Gloria St. Pierre. You stopped seeing Mr. F, and you became a carhop outside of Gary. And it was there that you met Mr. G?”
“Arny Pappas,” she said.
“Right—” said George, “Arny Pappas—Mr. G. Is carhop one word or two?”
“Two words, one word—” she said, “who ever wrote it down before?” She was a tiny girl—a trinket brunette, very pretty, very pale, and hard as nails. She was bored stiff with George and his questions. She yawned a lot, not bothering to cover her velvet mouth. And her responses were bewilderingly derisive. “A smart college kid like you ought to be able to make ten words out of it,” she said.
Gamely, George went on trying to sound professional and brisk. “Well now,” he said, “was there some reason for your discontinuing your education in your junior year?”
“My father was a drunk,” she said. “My stepmother clawed. I was already grown up. I already looked twenty-one. I could make all the money I wanted. Arny Pappas gave me a yellow Buick convertible all my own. Honey—” she said, “what did I want with algebra and Ivanhoe?”
“Um,” said