was closing down and getting ready to move on to the next town.
The ringmaster was seated in the conference room when I opened the door and looked in.
“Afternoon, Drummond,” he said, staring at me curiously, obviously wondering why I’d asked him to meet me here.
I grinned. “Hey, Eddie. Tough luck the way this whole thing turned out, huh?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” he immediately snapped. “They tossed me the wrong man. It was their fuckup, not mine.”
“That’s one way to look at it. I just wanted to drop by and leave you something to remember me by.” I tossed the baseball bat at his feet. It had been snapped in half.
He was still sputtering curses when I walked out. See, the thing with life is, you win a few and you lose a few, and if you don’t relish the few you win, well, then you go crazy. I’ve always been an optimist at heart, anyway. I mean, there’s plenty of girls other than Mary, right? And my stomach was still filled with all that Morton’s steak and lobster that the U.S. government even paid for. Plus I was back to sleeping in my own bed, without anybody stealing my blanket. Now I ask you: How could it get any better than that?
