So gramps wrote Joyce a big check and there we were. We rented a little house up on a hill, and then Joyce got this stupid moralistic thing.

“We both ought to get jobs,” Joyce said, “to prove to them that you are not after their money. To prove to them that we are self-sufficient.”

“Baby, that’s grammar school. Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working. Out here we call it ‘hustling.’ I’d like to be a good hustler.”

She didn’t want it.

Then I explained that a man couldn’t find a job unless he had a car to drive around in. Joyce got on the phone and gramps sent the money on in. Next thing I knew I was sitting in a new Plymouth. She sent me out on the streets dressed in a fine new suit, 40 dollar shoes, and I thought, what the hell, I’ll try to stretch it out. Shipping clerk, that’s what I was. When you didn’t know how to do anything that’s what you become—a shipping clerk, receiving clerk, stock boy. I checked two ads,
went to two places and both of the places hired me. The first place smelled like work, so I took the second.

So there I was with my gummed tape machine working in an art store. It was easy. There was only an hour or two of work a day. I listened to the radio, built a little office out of plywood, put an old desk in there, the telephone, and I sat around reading the Racing Form. I’d get bored sometimes and walk down the alley to the coffee shop and sit in there, drinking coffee, eating pie and flirting with the waitresses.

The truck drivers would come in: “Where’s Chinaski?”

“He’s down at the coffeeshop.”

They’d come down there, have a coffee, and then we’d walk up the alley and do our bit, take a few cartons off the truck or throw them on. Something about a bill of lading.

They wouldn’t fire me. Even the salesmen liked me. They were robbing the boss out the back door but I didn’t say anything. That was their little game. It didn’t interest me. I wasn’t much of a petty thief. I wanted the whole world or nothing.