Boys and Girls Together by William Saroyan Page A

All I’ve got to do is stop worrying. Forget the kids. Forget the writing. Forget the marriage. Forget the other kids I want.I’ll have them soon enough if I stop worrying. Forget the fights. Forget everything and just be lucky. Just look at the entries, telephone Leo, make the bet, win and collect. I can’t expect Daisy to go along the way the wives of the writers who
aren’t
lucky do. Why should she? She’s a beautiful girl who knows by instinct what’s important and what’s not. She knows by instinct what’s phoney. Why should she try to live the way the wives of the unlucky writers do? They sit on floors and sip sherry and talk. Their husbands are always tired from overworking their small energies. Their kids have got to be psycho-analysed before they’re nine. I’ll go along with Daisy. I’ll let her be. I’ll let everything be. I’ll stop worrying and get my luck back. I got some of it back today even though I was worrying at the time. I got it back, though. I can’t get along without my luck. The only way I can get it back is not to worry.
    He found a place to park, went to the airport bar, gulped down half his drink and laughed, the way he had laughed when he had had his luck and never needed to
believe
in it.
    â€˜Sierra Fox,’ he said to the bartender. ‘Is Sierra Fox running tomorrow at Bay Meadows?’
    â€˜I’ll see,’ the bartender said.
    â€˜Third race, I think.’
    He remembered the horse and liked the picture its name made: a fox in the Sierras, alone and laughing.He guessed that if it would be in
any
race it would be the third: no reason.
    â€˜I don’t see it anywhere.’
    â€˜Well, if he were running, and if it turned out that he was running in the third, I’d bet him. I’d bet him if it turned out that he was running in the first or fifth, too, but not so much.’
    â€˜What distance?’
    â€˜Any distance. Is that the one-fifteen coming in from Hollywood out there?’
    â€˜Yes, I think it is.’
    â€˜Give me one more quick one, then, please.’
    He gulped the second drink down and went out. He saw them and went to meet them, laughing lucky.
    They looked fine, and they said they had never seen him looking better.
    â€˜Wait till you see the kids,’ he said, and then, although he was still laughing that way, there was a congestion of agony in his soul and he thought he might puke. He didn’t stop laughing, though, and didn’t let them stop, either. They laughed almost all the way back because everything was actually that funny: appearances, voices, words.
    And then they were there, home.

Chapter 20
    The retired villain was past sixty and heavy now instead of lean and hard the way he had been when he had been most famous and had leered at and handled some of the most beautiful women in the movies.
    â€˜I was always meant to be fat,’ he said. ‘It was just that I was so determined to be famous.’
    â€˜Oh, you’re not fat,’ the woman said. ‘Is he?’ she said to the villain’s wife. ‘You know best.’
    The actor’s wife said: ‘He’s fat and I love it. What’s more,
I’m
fat, too.’
    â€˜You’re not at all. I’m the one who’s fat. You’re just voluptuous. Isn’t she just voluptuous, darling?’
    â€˜What?’ the man said. He’d been thinking about Sierra Fox, loping up the slope, alone and laughing. He was feeling no pain and was glad they’d come up. They were just about the nicest people in the world.
    â€˜
Alice
,’ the woman said to her husband. ‘Alice Murphy, from hunger, no background, who married Oscar Bard for his money. I just said, Doesn’t she look horrible?’
    â€˜Oh Daisy, you’ll never change,’ Alice said. ‘You’re just jealous because I live in Hollywood and have famous people to my house every day. Just because