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Show •89 thought about my life. I still wanted to be a big success in the American way. Sam Madrigal sang the praises of wealth to us four nights a week in our real estate class. He was a sanguine apple-cheeked forty-year old man who pranced back and forth while he talked to us. He wore perforated white-topped shoes; he had tiny feet on which he balanced his great bulk with surprising grace. Madrigal was a fat man's fat man, shapely as a classic urn, gorgeous as a globed peony in his iridescent suits; Beside him leaner men looked ill-proportioned and unnatural. He thought most of his students were perfectly stupid, but that was all right with Sam Madrigal-he'd entertain and exhort us and teach us what he could, and because determination and staying power count for more in this life than brains we might very well become successful persons. Listening to him, I fell in love with fancies and abstractions; images of myself as a desert entrepreneur danced in my head. At the same time something in me refused to take all this with absolute seriousness. I wasn't carried away by my own performance; occasionally the nameless demon made me step back and study my new self with a sour critical eye. For reasons I didn't understand the demon came out most orten when I was in the company of Mary-Ellen or her aunt. "You ought to come to class with me some evening and see the sort of people we are." I stepped on the brake and |
