Properties
- end_line
- 4952
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:41:20.747Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4904
- text
- have cancer or not. It said if you had any sores in your mouth that didn't heal pretty
quickly, it was a sign that you probably had cancer. I'd had this sore on the inside of my
lip for about two weeks. So figured I was getting cancer. That magazine was some little
cheerer upper. I finally quit reading it and went outside for a walk. I figured I'd be dead in
a couple of months because I had cancer. I really did. I was even positive I would be. It
certainly didn't make me feel too gorgeous. It'sort of looked like it was going to rain, but I
went for this walk anyway. For one thing, I figured I ought to get some breakfast. I wasn't
at all hungry, but I figured I ought to at least eat something. I mean at least get something
with some vitamins in it. So I started walking way over east, where the pretty cheap
restaurants are, because I didn't want to spend a lot of dough.
While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big
Christmas tree off a truck. One guy kept saying to the other guy, "Hold the sonuvabitch
up! Hold it up, for Chrissake!" It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas
tree. It was sort of funny, though, in an awful way, and I started to sort of laugh. It was
about the worst thing I could've done, because the minute I started to laugh I thought I
was going to vomit. I really did. I even started to, but it went away. I don't know why. I
mean I hadn't eaten anything unsanitary or like that and usually I have quite a strong
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stomach. Anyway, I got over it, and I figured I'd feel better if I had something to eat. So I
went in this very cheap-looking restaurant and had doughnuts and coffee. Only, I didn't
eat the doughnuts. I couldn't swallow them too well. The thing is, if you get very
depressed about something, it's hard as hell to swallow. The waiter was very nice,
though. He took them back without charging me. I just drank the coffee. Then I left and
started walking over toward Fifth Avenue.
It was Monday and all, and pretty near Christmas, and all the stores were open. So
it wasn't too bad walking on Fifth Avenue. It was fairly Christmasy. All those scraggy-
looking Santa Clauses were standing on corners ringing those bells, and the Salvation
Army girls, the ones that don't wear any lipstick or anything, were tinging bells too. I sort
of kept looking around for those two nuns I'd met at breakfast the day before, but I didn't
see them. I knew I wouldn't, because they'd told me they'd come to New York to be
schoolteachers, but I kept looking for them anyway. Anyway, it was pretty Christmasy all
of a sudden. A million little kids were downtown with their mothers, getting on and off
buses and coming in and out of stores. I wished old Phoebe was around. She's not little
enough any more to go stark staring mad in the toy department, but she enjoys horsing
around and looking at the people. The Christmas before last I took her downtown
shopping with me. We had a helluva time. I think it was in Bloomingdale's. We went in
the shoe department and we pretended she--old Phoebe-- wanted to get a pair of those
very high storm shoes, the kind that have about a million holes to lace up. We had the
poor salesman guy going crazy. Old Phoebe tried on about twenty pairs, and each time
the poor guy had to lace one shoe all the way up. It was a dirty trick, but it killed old
Phoebe. We finally bought a pair of moccasins and charged them. The salesman was very
nice about it. I think he knew we were horsing around, because old Phoebe always starts
giggling.
Anyway, I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or
anything. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I
came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd
never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and
nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating
- title
- Chunk 2