Toby

I needed to close the deal with Ralph:

“All right, listen,” I said to him. “Let’s say we charged ten cents a minute for people to look at this thing—know how many two-cent bottles that is?”

He just kept looking off.

I told him the answer was five. They would have to find five empty bottles to make what we’d be making in a single minute. Then I asked him how many minutes in an hour.

He just kept playing hard to get.

Or else? Maybe he really didn’t know the answer. Maybe he was even dumber than I thought—retarded dumb.

So I said to him, like a kindergarten teacher. “The answer is sixty. There’s sixty minutes in an hour, okay? So. That means if we charged ten cents a minute? We’d be making six dollars an hour. Six...dollars...an hour, Ralph. That’s three dollars for me and three dollars for you two people. And that’s just for one hour. Think how many—”

“Wait,” he said.

“Sorry. Going too fast?”

He wanted to know why I got three dollars while each of them got only a dollar and a half.

Okay, he wasn’t retarded.

I told him that was a very good point, very good arithmetic. But I also told him, be that as it may, I’ve got the head. “You can grab it and go running off again but I’ll just go back to your mom: Mrs. Cavaletto, what are we going to do with these two? Plus, I hate to say it, but let’s face it, I can get anybody to pass out fliers.”