"Did she ever choose you?"

"No, son, she didn't. And that's my greatest regret in life. I'd of given her my fullest attention and eager cooperation, believe-you-me, but she never chose to bestow her amazing gifts on me. But she did choose that stupid mark of a preacher!"

"What?"

"That's right! This one night after the show, Grace was having a laugh and a beer with a bunch of us in the cook tent, and in walks this Bible-pounder and says he wants to see her privately. Well, we all hooted and said sure, and the people in hell want ice water, too! He explained that several women of his parish had complained about the corruption of morals caused by this Whore of Babylon, who— We all stood up and tightened our belts and got ready to kick a little pious butt, but he lifted his hand and explained that he was just quoting the women and not making any accusations off'n his own bat. And we told him he'd betternot be, and we sniffed and flexed our shoulders and settled down again, each hoping that Grace had noticed how he'd jumped to her defense-you know how men do. Then this preacher explained that he hadn't come to drive Grace out of town, like his parishioners wanted him to. Instead, he'd come to save her. Well, we all hooted again, but Grace stood up and said she thought it was very kind and neighborly of him to concern himself with the well-being of her soul, and she'd be pleased to hear what he had to say. And off they went to her wagon, leaving the rest of us staring and shaking our heads and saying that there's no accounting for taste.

"Well, I guess this preacher didn't have the slightest idea of what Grace had in mind because when she made her intentions clear, he came backing out of her tent, stammering and gulping and begging her not to misunderstand his mission. Then he turned and ran, and the last we saw of him he was disappearing down the midway, all elbows and heels and flapping coattails.

"Would you believe it? That butt-stupid guilt peddler had a chance to experience heaven right here on earth, but he ran off and left poor Loving Grace Appleby as frustrated as a one-armed paperhanger in a roomful of electric fans! And you've got the brass to tell me you admire this man? Back off and give me breathing space, will you?"

I thought about all this for a while, then I said that it probably took a whole lot of willpower for him to run away, but it was the right and proper thing for a preacher to do.

Dirty-Shirt Red stopped short and turned to me. "Kid? I'm beginning to think that maybe you ain't got the makings of a carnie in you, after all."

"Well, maybe not. But I admire that widow's kind nature, the way she gave us those po'boys and pie and-"

"An easy mark. Hell, even 'bo's can score off her!"

"-and I admire a man like that banker who managed to put together enough money for a big car and fine clothes and servants and-"

"Just another mark. I told you how I scored a buck off'n him on a ham wheel, for Christ's sake!"

"-and I'd just love to be looked up to and admired, like those churchgoers were admiring that preacher and hanging on his words."

"The dumbest mark of them all! Threw away a chance with Loving Grace Appleby! Look at you, standing there with your face hanging out, telling me how you admire all those marks. What you don't seem to be able to get into your thick head, kid, is that the lowest, most down-on-his-luck carnie in the world is worth more than the kindest hearted, or the richest, or the most pious mark that ever stumbled onto a midway. That's how it is, and that's how it will always-" He stopped short.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

He was staring down the track into the evening gloom. "I'll be damned," he whispered. "I'll be god-good'n-damned if it ain't... How about that?"

I followed his stare, and there approaching us down the tracks was this... floppy thing. That's the only way I can describe this apparition. It was a man. But he didn't walk like a man. With each step, he'd lift his knee high and flop his foot out like he couldn't feel anything from his hips down. His elbows would jerk out to both sides at once, and he kept shrugging so hard I thought his shoulders would pinch his head off. He was dressed in stuff that looked like he'd robbed a scarecrow, and the way his rags were flopping and fluttering all around him didn't calm the general effect at all. His white hair was straggly and tangled, and as he approached I could hear that he was carrying on an animated conversation with someone he was plenty mad at.

Dirty-Shirt Red pulled me over to the side of the track to make room, and this apparition passed us by, jabbering and jerking, and winking and jabbing whoever he was talking to in the ribs with his elbow, and never even noticing us.

"Snatch off your cap, kid!" Dirty-Shirt told me. "If you're so hot to admire somebody, start admiring! That there is Carl 'Friendly Fingers' Boyd. He used to be the best three-card monty dealer in the game!"

Miss Plimsoll was plain.

Oh, she was loyal; you had to give her that. Totally, relentlessly, oppressively loyal. But this canine virtue was not sufficient to alter his determination to be rid of her, because, to be frank, her plainness was an embarrassment to him. Almost a personal affront.

Not only the reading public, but also the lemming swarm of academic critics proclaimed Matthew Griswald to be the Last of the Disenchanted Generation; the archetype of the moody, creative loner; a tough word merchant whose crisp, minimalist style concealed profound depths of sensitivity. And over the years he had come to share this perception of him. A snotty novelist of the New York gosh-it's-tough-to-be-me-and-misunderstood school went so far as to describe him as 'head priest of his own cult, forever burning incense at the altar of Matthew Griswald.' This was envious nonsense, of course, but, yes, Matthew did see himself as tough, heroic, virile, yet through it all deeply sensitive. And no sensitive man would fire the woman who had stood by him through the years of his Great Drought, when he couldn't write anything worthwhile, just because she wasn't a pretty little bit of sexy fluff.

But consider the way Plimsoll dealt with his guests!

She didn't openly disapprove of the cinema idols, the meteors of the jet set, and the rest of the social leeches and cultural sponges who sought to affirm their importance by casually letting it drop that they had been invited to one of Matthew's famous parties, but she was annoyingly unimpressed when he mentioned one of these beautiful people, and she would communicate this apathy by a dry, "Oh, really?" or a yet more deflating, "Is she someone I should know, sir?"

Not only was she unimpressed by those who flocked to praise him and to be seen doing so, she wasn't all that impressed by the Grand Old Man of American Letters himself. Of course, he didn't expect her to fall into ecstasies of adulation. By no means! But his four decades of literary prominence merited a certain deference, a certain...

And then there was the way she would arrive at his flat each day so businesslike and full of solemn purpose that he never dared to tell her that he had decided not to work that day because he was tired, or had a nasty hangover, or was just feeling lazy. Her busy, puritan presence forced him to grind out his daily quota of words, whether he wanted to or not.

But while these irritations of long standing constituted the background climate for his decision to give her the sack, there was no denying that the basic reason was the fact that Plimsoll was plain. Remorselessly, unrepentantly plain. Christ, she even lacked the intriguing ugliness of the jolie laide.Her plainness had a negative, draining weight. Her entry into a room had the same effect as three pretty girls suddenly leaving. (He liked that line. He had used it before. Several times, in fact.)