RISA: I don’t know why people waste their money playing numbers. Time you hit you just getting back what you put in.

WOLF: It’s the same thing as putting money in the bank. This way you might take out more than you put in . . .  but Mellon ain’t gonna let you do that. The numbers give you an opportunity. If it wasn’t for the numbers all these niggers would be poor.

MEMPHIS: It wasn’t till I hit the numbers eight or nine years ago that I got to the point where I could change my clothes every day. See, most of these niggers around here can’t do that. The only way they can do that is to hit the numbers or get lucky in a crap game. The ones that working . . .  the only way they can do anything is to wait on their income tax return. Half the time the government cheat them out of that.

WOLF: You hear from your old lady, Memphis?

MEMPHIS: Don’t bring up that woman to me. I ain’t heard from her. I know where she at. She up her sister’s house. She been up there them two months since she left. Twenty-two years. I give her everything I had for twenty-two years. Naw . . .  naw . . .  I give her everything I had when I met her . . .  then I give her everything I could get hold of for the next twenty-two years. And then when she was leaving . . .  she wouldn’t even shake my hand.

WOLF: I know how that go. That’s why I don’t mess with these women but so far.

MEMPHIS: I ain’t never left nobody in bad manners. I’m standing there trying to say, “May God bless you everywhere you go” . . .  and she wouldn’t even shake my hand.

RISA: Maybe she didn’t like the way you was treating her.

MEMPHIS: I treat that woman like she was a queen. Treat her like she made out of gold. Try to give her everything she want. She say “Baby, I want a car,” she got a Cadillac. She want a TV . . .  she got a color TV. It might take me a little while. Her wants might be too big for my pocket but I work it out and come up with something. I was working on the dishwasher when she walked out. I would have got her that but the plumbing got to be right. I’m talking to John D. about him fixing up the plumbing . . .  and she got up and walked out the door. You talking about she tired of the way I treated her. I treated that woman like she was the Queen of Sheba.

RISA: Maybe she don’t see it like that. She had to leave for something.