Time Out of Joint Read Free Page B

sale of water? Market holding firm?"
    Black laughed appreciatively. "Yes, people are still bathing and washing dishes."
    Entering the living room, Margo said, "Ragle, do you want café espresso? You, darling?"
    "None for me," Ragle said. "I had all the coffee I can drink for dinner. Keeps me awake as it is."
    Vic said, "I’ll take a cup."
    "Lasagne?" Margo asked the three of them.
    "No thanks," Ragle said.
    "I’ll try some," Vic said, and Bill Black wagged his head along with him. "Need any help?"
    "No," Margo said, and departed.
    "Don’t tank up too heavily on that Italian stuff," Ragle said to Vic. "It’s rich. A lot of dough and spices. And you know what that does to you."
    Black chimed in, "Yeah, you’re getting a little bulgy around the middle, there, Victor."
    Jokingly, Ragle said, "Well what do you expect from a bird who works in a grocery store?"
    That seemed to nettle Vic. He glared at Ragle and murmured, "At least it’s a real job."
    "Meaning what?" Ragle said. But he knew what Vic meant. At least it was a salaried job, to which he set out every morning and returned home from every night. Not something he did in the living room. Not a puttering about with something in the daily newspaper... like a kid, Vic had said one day during an argument between them. Mailing in boxtops from cereal packages and a dime for his Magic Decoder Badge.
    Shrugging, Vic said, "I’m not ashamed to work in a supermarket."
    "That’s not what you meant," Ragle said. For some obscure reason he savored these insults directed toward his preoccupation with the Gazette contest. Probably because of an inner guilt at frittering his time and energies away, a wanting to be punished. So he could continue. Better to have an external source berating him than to feel the deep internal gnawing pangs of doubt and self-accusation.
    And then, too, it gave him a kick that his daily entries earned him a higher net income than Vic’s slavery at the supermarket. And he didn’t have to spend time riding downtown on the bus.
    Walking over beside him, Bill Black lowered himself, pulled up a chair, and said, "I wondered if you saw this, Ragle." He unfolded, in a confidential manner, a copy of the day’s Gazette. Almost reverently he opened it to page fourteen. There, at the top, was a line of photos of men and women. In the center was a photo of Ragle Gumm himself, and under it the caption:
    Grand all-time winner in the Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? contest, Ragle Gumm. National champion leading for two straight years, an all-time record
    The other persons shown were lesser greats. The contest was national, with newspapers participating in strings. No local paper could afford to pay the tab. Costs ran higher—he had figured one day—than the famous Old Gold contest of the mid-thirties or the perennial "I use Oxydol soap because in twenty-five words or less" contests. But evidently it built circulation, in these times when the average man read comic books and watched...
    I’m getting like Bill Black, Ragle thought. Knocking TV. It’s a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, "What’s happened to this country? Where’s the level of education gone? The morality? Why rock-and-roll instead of the lovely Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy May time music that we listened to when we were their age?"
    Sitting close by him, Bill Black held on to the paper, jabbing at the picture with his finger. Obviously he was stirred by the sight of it. By golly, old Ragle Gumm’s picture in newspapers coast to coast! What honor! A celebrity living next door to him.
    "Listen, Ragle," Black said, "You’re really making a mint out of this ’green man’ contest, aren’t you?" Envy was rampant on his face. "Couple of hours at it, and you’ve got a week’s pay right there."
    With irony Ragle said, "A real soft berth."
    "No, I know you put in plenty of work at it," Black said. "But it’s creative work;