When it was time for Durch to speak, he came to the podium wearing overalls and a straw cowboy hat and said, “Hi! I’m Arthur.”

Everyone said, “Hi, Arthur!”

Then he said, “I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.”

The only sound anyone heard at the end of Arthur’s sentence was a girlish giggle coming from somewhere in the back of the room.

Arthur explained to the crowd of ex-and present alcoholics that he had just told them a joke.

Silence.

Arthur wondered if alcohol killed sense-of-humor cells in the brain.

After the meeting, a skinny, flat-chested, flat-assed, sticks-for-legs recovering alcoholic woman walked up to Arthur and said, “I thought the drug joke was really funny.”

“Was that you laughing in the back of the room?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus,” said Arthur, “I think I’m falling in love with you. What’s your name?”

“Evelyn Lounge.”

So there was our hero Billy Constable, standing on a subway platform watching Sonny Lieberman race to his about-to-depart 4 subway train. A twenty-dollar bet was in the offing to whichever one exited the station first. And then just when everything appeared lost for Sonny Lieberman (his 4 train’s doors were closing just as he got there), he did something that according to Billy Constable was “real smart.”

But it didn’t turn out to be “real smart” after all.

The subway doors closed anyway and the subway departed the station without Sonny Lieberman.

But with his umbrella.

Talk about dejection.

Watching that kid Billy what’s-his-name step onto his 5 train and ride off into the sunset, the sunset in this particular situation being a dark and scuzzy subway tunnel, was bad enough to sore loser Sonny Lieberman. Double that despair when he lost his spanking-new Brooks Brothers blue and white umbrella, the one with the Yale University colors. There it went sticking out of the closed subway doors like someone’s arm. Triple the despair when Sonny lost his temper, kicked a soda pop machine, and jammed the big toe of his right foot.

A trifecta of bad luck.

Billy Constable stared out of his subway window unaware of his boss’s toe jam. But he did know about the umbrella. He saw it disappear into the tunnel. Not only that, but it finally dawned on Billy that he had just beaten his boss—his new boss!—for twenty dollars. When he told the story to his buddy Jimmy Joel Jenks, JJ said, “Not smart.”

The next morning Billy dreaded going to work.

On his walk to Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a cruller and a coffee with milk and two sugars, he debated whether to go to work at all or just look for another job.

He decided to face the music. Jobs, he remembered, were hard to find.

Billy’s apprehension turned to downright fear during his subway ride. It metamorphosed into a sweaty panic while he was walking to the office building on Twentieth Street. The panic changed to a vise-like clutch in his chest when he strolled into the building’s lobby.