Winning the Game and Other Stories

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YOU RUIN YOUR TEETH WHEN YOU’RE A KID, but later after you make a lot of money you find a dentist who fixes your mouth. That’s what happened with me; I implanted every tooth in my mouth, a marvel of odontological engineering. I’m full of teeth that don’t fall out or decay, but when I laugh in front of a mirror I miss my old mouth; my lips open now in a way I don’t like. In any case, I don’t lack for teeth and I can champ down on women and steaks. I used to live in a lousy housing project and catch the train, squeezed in like sardines in a can. Today I live in a beautiful mansion in a gated community in the Barra, I have two cars and two drivers. I used to have one leg shorter than the other and didn’t even know it. I would go out with waitresses in luncheonettes, maids, factory workers, some of them illiterate. Money got me legs of the same length, gave me a wife from a good family, ruined but with all sorts of diplomas, gave me a mistress, without a diploma but who knows how to wear elegant clothes and put on a show when she crosses a ballroom. Money, that’s something I understand.

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