It was funny to watch, but then I realized that everybody on the block had Scotch and everything else now, and I wouldn’t get nothing for mine. Still, I figured I could lay with it until everybody had drank theirs up. But that was the way my luck was running—even things that looked sweet weren’t working out right for me.

I got depressed about the whole thing. I sat in the window and watched the people down in the street having a good time, and I began to feel worse and worse.

I have a funny way of thinking—at least I think it’s funny because I don’t hear anybody else saying they think the way I do. What I do is to think things part of the way out, and then I put them aside and think them out some more later on. I had begun to think about what my father had said a long time ago about your days piling up on you, and as I sat in the window of the Grant, I began thinking about it again. It was beginning to make more sense to me.

School was going to be out in another five or six weeks, and then I was going to have to figure out something to do with myself. Before, I’d spend the summer playing ball and waiting around until school started again, so that would take care of itself. But now that school was just about over for me, the days seemed different, and I had to figure out what I was going to do with them. I knew I didn’t want to work at the Grant all the time. I hated Jimmy Harrison, the manager, and the job was a chump job anyway—sweeping floors and changing beds and that kind of thing. The only thing that made it not so bad was me telling myself it was just until I finished school. I saw a lot of guys who had either finished school or had dropped out just hanging around the block, and I didn’t want to do that either. I wondered if my days were piling up on me, like my father said they might. They were changing, at least, or maybe I was changing. Or was supposed to be and wasn’t.

I sat in the window for a long time, and then I laid across the bed, just waiting for time to pass. I dozed off for a while, and when I woke, it was just about dark. I thought about going to a movie but decided to save my money so I could go the next day in case it rained. I got a basketball I kept at the Grant and wandered over to the playground. The lights were on, and I figured I’d shoot a few baskets. Playing ball, even shooting baskets by myself, always made me feel better. I figured to shoot until I got tired and then come back and get some sleep.

I had my head so wrapped up in myself I didn’t see this guy laying on the court until I got right up on him.