“That’s right. I keep forgetting. It’s an odd name, too. Somehow I don’t seem to remember names quite as well as I used to. But shucks, you don’t have the personalities to go with them any more. Why, I can remember back here when San Francisco was just full of men who had personality sticking out all over ’em. Why—”
I looked at my watch. “I’ve got a train to catch,” I said. “It was a real pleasure meeting you. You’ll pardon me if I run away — here, waiter. The check please... Don’t let me hurry you, Mr. Ranigan. Just sit and finish that champagne. I’m sorry I have to run, but that’s the way it is, you know.”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s the way things are now. If you want to make a dollar, you’ve got to keep on the run every minute trying to grab it before the other fellow gets it. Things didn’t used to be that way. It used to be there was plenty of money for everybody. Nobody begrudged the other fellow what he was making, and when you made anything, you could put it in your pocket. That ain’t the way things are now what with government agents coming around and snooping over your books trying to gouge the last penny out of you. Say, we had no sales tax, no income tax, no payroll tax — why, it was a pleasure doing business, and if a government man had ever come in the door and said he wanted to look over our books, he’d have gone out on a stretcher. In those days they used to say, ‘What do you think this is? Russia? Get the hell out of here.’ And believe me, buddy, the government kept out. Maybe that was why business was so good. Why, I remember one year—”
I shook hands with him and hurried out. I looked back at the door. He was talking to the waiter, telling him over his fourth glass of champagne how good the city used to be.
It was a slack time at the I pushed a twenty-dollar bill through the arch-shaped opening in the glass and placed my lips as close as possible to the round hole.
The girl who sat on the stool by the change machine put shapely fingers on a series of levers and smiled at me with wide, innocent blue eyes. She looked to be somewhere in the late twenties. “How many please?” she asked. “One?”
I said, “None.”
She started to poke the levers and the smile faded from her eyes. “Did you say one?” she asked.
“I said none.”
She took her fingers away from the levers, looked at me, and said, “Well?”