Still Fighting Old Wars

"Don't you worry. There's a famous man sends me a check every month, enough to live on."

"Who? How much?"

He looked down and fidgeted with something inside a desk drawer. "I promised I'd never tell that. Shouldn't even told you what I did."

I asked him for the names of his friends. " Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin. Jackie Gleason was a friend," he said. " Rocky Marciano was a friend."

"I mean, ones you see more often."

Abruptly, as if he'd just remembered something, he headed toward the cubicle door.

"Who...?"

He stopped. "If you see me, I'll be by myself. I travel alone. If I'm with someone, I'm responsible for someone. If I'm alone, I'm only responsible for myself"

I asked about the two women he had married. "You can't outargue no lady," he said. "They can blast their mouths off 99 billion times, all day, all night, same voice, same words, and you get tired. I just walked out. Don't like the way the pot's boilin', turn the fire out."

I asked him for the names of his 15 children. "Georgianna...Shanita...Michael...Jonathan." He peered out the door, toward the ring.