Meatloaf w/2 sides $2.35

Sides—Collard greens

Mashed potatoes

Green beans

Macaroni & cheese

Potato salad”

The winning number combination of the previous day, 651, is also written on the menu board. WOLF is in the telephone booth. He comes out, shuffles some papers, and starts to his seat at the counter when the phone rings. He answers it just as MEMPHIS enters from the back carrying a newspaper. MEMPHIS is a self-made man whose values of hard work, diligence, persistence, and honesty have been consistently challenged by the circumstances of his life. His greatest asset is his impeccable logic. WOLF, on the phone, writes something down.)

WOLF: Wolf. . . . Eight sixty-four. Boxed for a dollar . . .  Yeah, I got that.

MEMPHIS: Hey, Wolf, I told you about that. You can’t be tying up my phone with them numbers.

WOLF: Seven thirty-one straight . . .  for a dollar. Okay.

(He hangs up and exits the phone booth. He is a man who enjoys his notoriety and popularity as the community’s numbers runner. While he manages to keep money in his pocket and a decent pair of shoes on his feet, his inability to find secure female companionship is the single failure that marks his life.

MEMPHIS: I told you about tying up my phone with them numbers. I don’t want that in here.

WOLF: Who’s trying to call you? Risa will tell you . . .  ain’t nobody trying to call you.

MEMPHIS: My lawyer might be trying to call me.

WOLF: That’s what happened to Harvey before he got them ten years. He sitting around waiting for his lawyer to call him. If I was him I would have been in Cleveland or Detroit. Naw, he wanna sit around and wait on his lawyer to call him.

MEMPHIS: This a civil lawyer. There’s more than one kind of lawyer. But you don’t know nothing about that.

WOLF: I know there’s different kinds of lawyers. The NAACP got all kinds of lawyers. It don’t do nobody no good.
(He calls out.)
Hey, Risa, give me some sugar.

MEMPHIS: That’s the second time this week that six fifty-one hit. I don’t know the last time I can recall a number coming twice in the same week. That was L.D.’s number. If he was still living he’d be in big money.

WOLF: They had that six ninety-four come twice about a year ago. Milt hit for five dollars both times. Got mad cause he didn’t have twenty dollars on it.
(He calls.)
Let me get some sugar, Risa.
(RISA enters from the back. RISA is a young woman who, in an attempt to define herself in terms other than her genitalia, has scarred her legs with a razor.)

MEMPHIS: I remember that. I had six ninety-six. I switched off to six ninety-two and it come back six ninety-four. I remember that. You talk about Milt being mad.