The Music of Chance by Paul Auster Page B

us, and then we walk off with their money. You’ve got to feel sorry for bozos like that. Just a little bit anyway.”
    “I wouldn’t push it too far. No one goes into a game expecting to lose, not even millionaires with good manners. You never can tell, Jack. For all we know, they’re sitting down there in Pennsylvania feeling sorry for us.”
    The afternoon turned out to be warm and hazy, with thick clouds massing overhead and a threat of rain in the air. They drove through the Lincoln Tunnel and began following a series of New Jersey highways in the direction of the Delaware River. For the first forty-five minutes, neither one of them said very much. Nashe drove, and Pozzi looked out the window and studied the map. If nothing else, Nashe felt certain that he had come to a turning point, that no matter what happened in the game that night, his days on theroad had come to an end. The mere fact that he was in the car with Pozzi now seemed to prove the inevitability of that end. Something was finished, and something else was about to begin, and for the moment Nashe was in between, floating in a place that was neither here nor there. He knew that Pozzi stood a good chance of winning, that the odds were in fact better than good, but the thought of winning struck him as too easy, as something that would happen too quickly and naturally to bear any permanent consequences. He therefore kept the possibility of defeat uppermost in his thoughts, telling himself it was always better to prepare for the worst than to be caught by surprise. What would he do if things went badly? How would he act if the money were lost? The strange thing was not that he was able to imagine this possibility but that he could do so with such indifference and detachment, with so little inner pain. It was as if he finally had no part in what was about to happen to him. And if he was no longer involved in his own fate, where was he, then, and what had become of him? Perhaps he had been living in limbo for too long, he thought, and now that he needed to find himself again, there was nothing to catch hold of anymore. Nashe suddenly felt dead inside, as if all his feelings had been used up. He wanted to feel afraid, but not even disaster could terrify him.
    After they had been on the road for a little less than an hour, Pozzi started to talk again. They were traveling through a thunderstorm at that point (somewhere between New Brunswick and Princeton), and for the first time in the three days they had been together, he seemed to show some curiosity about the man who had rescued him. Nashe was caught with his guard down, and because he had not been prepared for Pozzi’s bluntness, he found himself talking more openly than he would have expected, unburdening himself of things he normally would not have shared with anyone. As soon as he saw what he was doing, he almost cuthimself short, but then he decided that it didn’t matter. Pozzi would be gone from his life by the next day, and why bother to hold anything back from someone he would never see again?
    “And so, Professor,” the kid said, “what are you going to do with yourself after we strike it rich?”
    “I haven’t decided yet,” Nashe said. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll probably go see my daughter and spend a few days with her. Then I’ll sit down and make some plans.”
    “So you’re a daddy, huh? I hadn’t figured you for one of those family guys.”
    “I’m not. But I have this little girl in Minnesota. She’ll be turning four in a couple of months.”
    “And no wife in the picture?”
    “There used to be one, but not anymore.”
    “Is she out there in Michigan with the kid?”
    “Minnesota. No, the girl lives with my sister. With my sister and brother-in-law. He used to play defensive back for the Vikings.”
    “No kidding? What’s his name?”
    “Ray Schweikert.”
    “Can’t say I ever heard of him.”
    “He only lasted a couple of seasons. The poor lummox smashed up his