STERLING: I know a lot of people play numbers. If you lucky you can do alright. I been trying to hit since I got out. I dreamt about dogs and looked it up in the dream book. That didn’t work. I found a quarter on the fourth step of my house and played four twenty-five. That didn’t work. Now I’m counting cars. I count all the Buicks I see and play that with all the Cadillacs and Fords I see. If I had a telephone number I’d play that.

RISA: I don’t know why people throw their money away. That twenty-five cents you found is twenty-five cents you could have had. You could have played the jukebox or something.

STERLING: I’m trying to get twenty-five hundred dollars. I wouldn’t mind taking a chance on that if I had me a good number.

RISA: Play seven eighty-one.

STERLING: How you come up with that?

RISA: I got seven scars on one leg and eight on the other.

STERLING: Where you get the one from?

RISA: That’s my business.

STERLING: One what?

RISA: Go on, Sterling, I ain’t playing with you.

STERLING: What? I just say, “Where you get the one from?” You getting all embarrassed. What you getting embarrassed about? I ought to play seven eighty-two. We can put one and one together.

RISA: Go on, Sterling. You asked me for a number and I give you one now. If you want to play it go on and play it.

STERLING: I’m gonna put five dollars on that number seven eighty-one. Wait—let me see how much money I got.
(He looks in his pocket.)
I ain’t got nothing right now, but as soon as I get me some money I’m gonna play that seven eighty-one. If it come out we gonna get married.
(HOLLOWAY enters.)
Hey, Holloway.

HOLLOWAY: Hey, Sterling. How you doing, Risa?

STERLING: Hey, Holloway, you talking about that fence that run in back of Lutz’s Meat Market where he put his garbage, back of that alley there, across from that billboard above Eddie’s Restaurant? Is that the fence Hambone painted?

HOLLOWAY: Yeah, that’s it.

STERLING: That fence run all up the side and all the way around the back there. He ought to have give him two hams. I wouldn’t paint that fence for no ham. He’d have to give me a case of chickens or one of them half-cows he got hanging over there. He’d have to give me something like that. That fence run all the way back around there.

HOLLOWAY: Used to have another part closer to the front, but Lutz tore that down.