An empty cab passed him. Billy put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The taxi stopped. Billy got in, said, “The bus terminal at Fortieth and Eighth Avenue, please,” and slid way down in his seat.

Billy pulled out his wallet and counted his money. Over three hundred dollars. Good thing he slipped those hundred-dollar bills and twenties out of Rosie’s pocketbook before they left for the studio. Something told him to do it. He’d pay her back. As soon as he found work in Bowling Green he’d start sending her the three hundred dollars.

Hell, that’ll be easy, he mused. I won’t owe anybody anything once I get home. Once that bus ticket’s in my hand, I’ll be debt free!

When the taxi arrived at the Port Authority building, Billy Constable gave the driver a twenty and said, “Keep the change.”

The cabdriver said, “Thank you!”

Billy ran inside the building. The woman at the information counter pointed to the row of windows where Billy could buy a bus ticket to Bowling Green. He ran to one of those windows and told the woman clerk, “One ticket to Bowling Green, Kentucky, please.”

“Return ticket too?” she asked.

“No, thank you, just one way. I’m never comin’ back here, ma’am.”

“I take it you didn’t like the Big Apple,” she said. She was an older woman with white hair done up tight to her head like a nun.

“No, ma’am. Not at all. As far as I’m concerned, that bus ticket you’re about to give me is a ticket to the Promised Land.”

“That’ll be a hundred and thirty-three dollars and fifty cents, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Billy, pushing two hundred-dollar bills toward her.

The woman took interminably long doing whatever she was doing back there. It seemed like forever before the woman pushed the ticket and Billy’s change toward him. He put the bills and quarters in his pocket, kissed the ticket, and held it up in the air.

“Freedom,” whispered Billy Constable, looking at the bus ticket.

The bus ticket was yanked out of his hand and ripped in half.

“Not so fast,” said the big ugly man wearing the leather porkpie hat. “You won’t be needin’ this where you’re goin’, putzo.”

The big ugly man grabbed one of Billy’s arms. Another thug grabbed the other arm, and the two frog-walked Billy out of the terminal. As the three headed for Eighth Avenue, one of the thugs said to the other, “I told you he would head for the bus terminal. You owe me a Twinkie.”

VII

“And now…the moment we’ve all been waiting for…”

And now…the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” said host Rip Puckett with forced drama and solemnity. As Puckett said those words, a huge sixty-second clock was lowered into place. It hung in the middle of the stage, casting a somber shadow like Death’s scythe.

“The moment of truth has arrived. The time has come to ask…the…big…question! Are you ready, Vera?”