ONE CHRISTMAS AN aunt gave him a two-and-a-half-dollar gold piece, a coin smaller than a dime. His mother was afraid he would lose it and had it changed at the bank into pennies. He enjoyed the pennies, piling them into stacks, which represented castles, and attacking them with marbles, which represented armies. When he tired of the pennies he asked his mother to change them into nickels. He liked the solidity and dull luster of nickels, much preferring the Indian heads, with the big nose and feathers, to the virtuous profile on the Liberty heads. Eventually he had the nickels changed into twenty-five dimes, which he spent. Four times a year his father traveled to the West Coast and brought back a silver dollar each for him and his brother. When he had collected five or six he spent them; since silver dollars were minted and used mainly in the West, store clerks and movie cashiers sometimes called on superiors to authenticate them. The summer he was eight he asked his mother for a weekly allowance beyond the nightly nickel he was given for ice cream or candy. Fifteen cents was decided on, and his mother said it would be a good thing if he saved it but that under no circumstances should he spend it all at once. With his first allowance, however, and the night’s nickel he bought a Coke, a cone, a Mary Jane, and a frozen Milky Way and vomited outside the soda fountain. In the city on schoolday mornings his mother gave him five cents, which he spent on his way home for lunch: three cents for the newspaper and two for an unwrapped chocolate bar with nuts. His closest grammar school friend never had money, but they parted before the candy store so there was no embarrassment. He seemed to have more money than his contemporaries. In high school he was able with the money his mother gave him for carfare and incidentals to treat any boy he chose to a hamburger and coffee after school at a favorite counter that advertised hamburgers “with a college education”; this was during the depression, and the twelve cents one cost was expensive. In the army he made fifty dollars a month; it was gone in two weeks. To keep in cigarettes and beer he and his friends would, one by one, hock their watches in town for ten or fifteen dollars apiece, then redeem them on the first pass after payday. The last possession to go—just before payday—was his best friend’s lucky silver dollar. He and the friend would tell a sympathetic woman clerk at the PX that they were broke: could they use the lucky silver dollar to buy beer and retrieve it in a day or two? Many of the PX women were married to servicemen overseas and soft on soldiers’ needs; most agreed. When he married, his father gave him a thousand dollars, more money than he had had before; he resisted spending it, feeling that it should be kept intact as if it weren’t his. However, it slipped away without pleasure on everyday items. One evening he took his wife and a couple to a night club for dinner; when the check came he removed from his inside pocket an alligator wallet and from the wallet took a wad of newsprint sheets cut like old-fashioned five-pound notes. Ceremoniously he unfolded them as he had seen done many times in British movies. He placed three sheets on the check, and returned the rest to his wallet and the wallet to his jacket. His wife and friends got the joke, but the waiter called the manager, who stood by the table until the bill was paid with green American money. Although his wife worked and between them they should have had enough money to live comfortably, she came from a poor family in which anyone who saved was penalized by having the savings called upon at the first family crisis. Because of this and the problems between them they could not save, even for things they agreed they wanted, but spent in reciprocal hostility. When he left his family he accepted a punishing settlement and lived on windfalls. For two weeks he worked at night on a movie script for a foreign director; to avoid taxes he was paid in cash, with three five-hundred-dollar bills. He took the director to lunch and put one of the bills on the check; they watched the waiter do a double take; the waiter said, “I’ve seen these before.” Now that his children are grown and his former wife has renounced her alimony he feels well off. He brings pennies into the house but does not take them out; he has a large salad bowl full of pennies, which he likes to dig his fingers into and show to friends. He intends to give them someday to a child visitor. He has lost his regard for quarters and dimes now that they are copper-filled and ring false. As prices continue to rise year after year he feels uneasy about keeping money, although he will keep it, just as when he was young he felt uneasy about spending money, although he spent it.