"Terrible loss," the driver said, waiting for the Madison Avenue light.
I chose this better opportunity. "Loss, hell! A baseball player. A tough guy. Somebody with trick reflexes who could bat a ball farther than anybody else, oftener. And the whole damned United States gets choked up and goes into mourning. Double-page spreads in the newspapers. When a really great man dies, he's lucky to get one snapshot and a column." I looked quickly at his framed license. Saul Kaufman. "Will the American people go on a morbid spree when Einstein dies?" I asked.
It got him. He glanced back appreciatively. "You said it!"
If his name had been Angelo Utrillo, I would have suggested Fermi. He wouldn't have known who Fermi was, but my explanation would have filled him with pride. And if it had been Michael Riority, I would have tried De Valera.
"Babe Ruth," I repeated when I paid my fare. "Did the Mirror and the News give Freud a double-page spread? The greatest mind in the twentieth century. Greatest Jew since Jesus. We should be proud to live in the same age. But what are we proud of? Babe Ruth. Baseball's okay—but the way people act about it certainly shows what's wrong with people."
"You're right, Mac."
I tipped him a quarter. Money wasn't going to be useful to me much longer.
Then I felt sick.
The money I possessed—the insurance—the money that might come from my books and perhaps from the posthumous sale of a few stories to the movies—would be all there was
for my wife