"I don't know ... the room."
"What's wrong with the room?" Jory bent over. His eyes were intent,
but his voice stayed low. He spoke with great care.
"I ... don't know. It looks funny. Empty. Older. No, wait--" And the
feeling was gone. Ernie shook his head. It was the old, crowded and
not too clean cafeteria, again.
He turned to Jory. "Well, they better not! I was out of work six
months on the last layoff." He paused and marshaled a last, telling
argument: "I can't afford it!"
Jory laughed. "Take it easy. I said there _might_ be one. Lots of
things might happen. Hell, the world itself might come to an end."
Ernie said grumpily, "I don't like 'mights'. Why can't they leave a
man alone and let him do his work? Why do they gotta--"
Jory stood up and grinned. "Come on, Ernie. What do you need money
for? I mean, other than to keep up the payments on your TV?"
Ernie rose. "Don't be such a guy," he grumbled. "We better get back.
If I come in late from lunch, I've had it."
It was a quarter of a mile across the plant yard to where they worked.
They walked in silence for the first few yards. Ernie thought his own
thoughts and listened to the sound of their feet on the gravel.
Presently, Jory said, "Ernie, you watch the fights. Do you remember
back when they had the Rico-Marsetti bout?"
Ernie still felt irritable. "Hell, yes, I remember. It was just two
weeks ago. You make it sound like it happened six months back."
"How well do you remember it?"
"Well enough. That bum Marsetti cost me ten bucks when he dived in the
sixth. He was the two-to-one favorite."
"He didn't dive."
"Yeah? You ask him?"
"No. I read the papers. He was pretty scrambled up ... in the head, I
mean ... for quite a while after they brought him back to his dressing
room."
"Maybe he was that way all along. Maybe they just then noticed it."
Jory laughed. "Don't get cynical, Ernie. It's a sign of old age. No.
Marsetti was really out of his head. He kept going through the last
round ... you know, in his mind. He did it perfect, thirty or forty
times, just up to the knockout." Then he stopped and went through the
whole round again.
"The doctors that examined him said that it happened because he ran
into something he couldn't face."