Closing Time Read Online Free PDF

Yorker . Whoever has much choice? We take the best we can get, Michael, not what enraptures us. Even the Prince of Wales."
    "That's a hell of a way to live, Dad, isn't it?"
    "It's the way we have to."
    Michael was silent a minute. "I got scared when I saw that No Visitors sign on your door," he confessed in a mild tone of injury. "Who the hell put it up? I began to think you might really be sick."
    "It's my idea of a joke," mumbled Yossarian, who had added to the sign with a brush-point pen the notice that violators would be shot. "It helps keep people out. They just keep popping in all day long without even telephoning. They don't seem to realize that lying around in a hospital all day can be pretty demanding work."
    "You never answer your telephone anyway. I bet you're the only patient here with an answering machine. How much longer are you going to stay?"
    "Is the mayor still the mayor? The cardinal still the cardinal? Is that prick still in office?"
    "What prick?"
    "Whatever prick is in office. I want all pricks out."
    "You can't stay here that long!" cried Michael. "What the hell are you doing here anyway? You had your annual workup only a couple of months ago. Everyone thinks you're crazy."
    "I object. Who does?"
    "I do."
    "You're crazy."
    "We all do."
    "I object again. You're all crazy."
    "Julian says you could have taken over the whole company a long time ago if you had any ambition and brains."
    "He's crazy too. Michael, this time I was scared. I had a vision."
    "Of what?"
    "It wasn't of taking over M & M. I had an aura, or thought I did, and was afraid I was having a seizure or a tumor, and I wasn't sure if I was imagining it or not. When I'm bored I get anxious. I get things like conjunctivitis and athlete's foot. I don't sleep well. You won't believe this, Michael, but when I'm not in love I'm bored, and I'm not in love."
    "I can tell," said Michael. "You're not on a diet."
    "Is that how you know?"
    "It's one of the ways."
    "I thought of epilepsy, you know, and of a TIA, a transient ischemic attack, which you don't know about. Then I was afraid of a stroke-everyone should always be afraid of a stroke. Am I talking too much? I had this feeling I was seeing everything twice."
    "You mean double?"
    "Not that, not yet. The feeling of suspecting that I had gone through everything before. There was hardly anything new for me in the daily news. Every day there seemed to be another political campaign going on or about to start, another election, and when it wasn't that, it was another tennis tournament, or those fucking Olympic Games again. I thought it might be a good idea to come in here and check. Anyway, my brain is sound, my mind is clear. So is my conscience."
    "That's all very good."
    "Don't be too sure. Great crimes are committed by people whose conscience is clear. And don't forget, my father died of a stroke."
    "At ninety-two?"
    "Do you think that made him want to jump with joy? Michael, what will you do with yourself? Disturbing my peace of mind is my not knowing where the hell you're going to fit in."
    "Now you are talking too much."
    "You're the only one in the family I really can talk to, and you won't listen. The others all know this, even your mother, who always wants more alimony. Money does matter, more than almost everything else. Want a sound idea? Get a job now with a company with a good pension plan and a good medical plan, any company and any job, no matter how much you hate it, and stay there until you're too old to continue. That's the only way to live, by preparing to die."
    "Oh, shit, Dad, you really believe that?"
    "No, I don't, although I think it might be true. But people can't survive on Social Security, and you won't even have that. Even poor Melissa will be better off."
    "Who's poor Melissa?"
    "That sweetheart of a nurse out there, the one that's attractive and kind of young."
    "She's not so attractive and she's older than I am."
    "She is?"
    "Can't you tell?"
    Toward the end of Yossarian's