The New Yorker Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

it? You don’t have a car.”
    “You wouldn’t have one if your father hadn’t given it to you.”
    “That seems a bit off the subject.”
    “I wouldn’t drive a car if I had one. I’m through with machines.”
    “Michael, I guess I really don’t feel like talking to you tonight.”
    “One thing you could do would be to give her calcium. It’s a natural tranquilizer.”
    “O.K. Thanks very much for the advice. I hope it didn’t tax you too much.”
    “You’re very sarcastic to me. How do you expect me to be understanding when all I get is sarcasm?”
    “I don’t really expect it.”
    “You punch words when you talk.”
    “Are you stoned, Michael?”
    “No, I’m just lonesome. Just sitting around.”
    “Where are you living?”
    “In a house.”
    “How can you afford that? Your grandmother?”
    “I don’t want to talk about how I live. Can we change the subject?”
    “Can we hang up instead, Michael?”
    “Sure,” Michael says. “Good night, baby.”
    Sam and Carlos are visiting Michael. Carlos’s father owns a plastics plant in Bridgeport. Carlos can roll a joint in fifteen seconds, which is admirable to Michael’s way of thinking. But Carlos can be a drag, too. Right now he is talking to Michael about a job Michael could have in his father’s plant.
    “No more factories, Carlos,” Michael says. “If everybody stopped working, the machines would stop, too.”
    “I don’t see what’s so bad about it,” Carlos says. “You work the machines for a few hours, then you leave with your money.”
    “If I ask my grandmother for money she sends it.”
    “But will she keep sending money?” Sam asks.
    “You think I’m going to ask her?”
    “I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind working someplace in the South, where the women look like Tammy Wynette.”
    “North, South—what’s the difference?”
    “What do you mean, ‘What’s the difference?’ Women in the South must look something like Tammy Wynette, and women up North look like mill rats.”
    Carlos always has very powerful grass, which Michael enjoys. Carlos claims that he puts a spell on the grass to make it stronger.
    “Why don’t you put a curse on your father’s machines?” Michael says now.
    “What for?” Carlos asks.
    “Why don’t you change all the machines into Tammy Wynettes?” Sam asks. “Everybody would wake up in the morning and there would be a hundred Tammy Wynettes.”
    Sam realizes that he has smoked too much. The next step, he thinks now, is to stop smoking.
    “What do you do?” Carlos asks Sam.
    “I sell shoes.” Sam notices that he has answered very sanely. “Before that, I was a math major at Antioch.”
    “Put a curse on that factory, Carlos,” Michael says.
    Carlos sighs. Everybody smokes his grass and pays no attention to what he says and then they want him to put curses on things all the time.
    “What if I put a curse on you?” Carlos asks.
    “I’m already cursed,” Michael says. “That’s what my grandmother says in her letters—that I was such a blessing to the family, but I myself am cursed with ill luck.”
    “Change me into George Jones,” Sam says.
    Carlos stares at them as he rolls a joint. He isn’t putting a curse on them, but he is considering it. He firmly believes that he is responsible for his godfather’s getting intestinal cancer. But he isn’t really a magician. He would like his curses to be reliable and perfect, like a machine.
    Michael’s grandmother has sent him a present—five pounds of shelled pecans. A booklet included with the package says that they are “Burstin’ with wholesome Southern goodness.” They’re the first thing he has eaten for a day and a half, so he eats a lot of them. He thinks that he is eating in too much of a hurry, and he smokes some hash to calm down. Then he eats some more pecans. He listens to Albinoni. He picks out a seed from a pouch of grass that is lying under the couch and buries it in one of Prudence’s plants. He will have