By then, we were in front of Joe's house. It was as dark and curtained as the others.
he house was empty. The blinds had been drawn, the dishes neatly stacked and put away, and a note left on the doorstoop telling the milkman not to bring any more milk.
The note to Joe was on the kitchen table. It was hard for Joe to read on accounta it was blurred in spots where Marge had been crying and the tears had fallen on the paper. It told Joe—among a whole mess of other things—that she thought she had married a man, not a radio set, and since everybody was using them she was going to visit a Paradise booth that night.
"What am I going to do?" Joe asks remorsefully.
"That's your problem," I says heartlessly, thinking of all the chili dinners that went with Marge. "You made the booths in the first place."
"Yeah, I know." He pulls out a wad of papers from his pocket and thumbs through them. "I got contracts here for a Paradise booth in every town over five thousand population. I could be a millionaire in a month."
"Joe," I says, suddenly frightened, "don't do it. Look what happened here in Fremont. Why man, if you put those things all over the country there wouldn't be a soul left in the United States after a month had gone by."
"You're right, Harry," he says. "Absolutely right." And he takes a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and sets fire to the papers and lets them burn 'til they're nothing but ashes.