‘It bother you much, not going to school?’ George said.

‘That ain’t what you came for.’

‘Look at it this way: you learn good on your own. What do you need school for? Besides, you’re a good worker and workers don’t need no schooling at all. What are you looking at the wall for? Why don’t you look at me? I ain’t ugly.’

Jonathan got to his feet, steeled himself and looked at George, at the changeable shadows around his eyes – and at the coat. ‘Get out,’ he said.

‘Listen, Jonathan. Why can’t we be friends? I say to myself, “Do the kid a favor. He don’t see what’s going on.” I owe you. I admit it. So I want to pay you back. You got to listen to me.’

‘Get out of here.’

‘Jonathan, listen! I got lots to say to you.’

‘I don’t want to hear it. Get out.’

‘Listen,’ George cried. ‘Give me a chance. Listen!’

After I’d been studying truth at Columbia for nearly four years without avail, one of my professors shouted at me, ‘Listen!’ – to this day I have no idea what made him so angry – ‘Listen to me: what I’m telling you is elementary. First-year stuff. Listen!’

‘Listen!’ George cried again, so anxious to tie Jonathan’s attention to him and to the coat that he knocked the candle over, righted it, hot wax running down his fingers, and didn’t even notice the burn. The light guttered, almost dying, then gained strength again. ‘Listen to me,’ George said. ‘You work hard, don’t you? So tell me now, where do you think all this work’s taking you? Where—’

‘Get out of here, goddamn you. Get out!’

They’d said to George – the older drummers had, the ones who knew – they said, ‘The fight is for the sucker’s attention in the first place. Don’t matter how you go about getting it. Liquor him. Needle him. Flatter him. Bribe him. But get his attention. When you do, your sale’s in the bag.’ It wasn’t quite that easy – nothing ever is – so in this most important of sales (testing the sucker’s reactions according to his hard-learned lessons), George slipped off his coat, threw it down, and smiled to himself to see Jonathan make the hoped-for, almost instinctive grab to rescue it from the dirt.

‘You’re right,’ George said, ‘we shouldn’t let it get dirty. A good-looking coat, ain’t it?’

‘It’s yours,’ Jonathan said. The words were out before he could stop the revulsion they betrayed.

‘Want one like it?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Get out of here, George. I’m telling you—’

‘You got kind of a boring line there, Jonathan. “Get out, George.” Can’t sell nothing with a single boring line. This here’s a nice coat. I like wearing it. Makes me feel good.’ He held the coat toward the candlelight and turned it this way and that. ‘We got no quarrel, Jonathan. Not you and me. Not no more. That’s all over with. We ought to be friends. Come on, what do you say?’