Kitten on a Trampoline

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On a warm and bright and shining day of a brand-new year I was driving a company car from Naples, Florida, north to Tampa. I was slamming it through traffic, irritable and edgy. The back end was stowed with samples, literature and display materials. I’d kept myself in top gear for three years, ever since I’d been graduated from Florida State. I’d turned myself into the best road man the Owen Drug Company had ever seen. I was making twenty thousand a year. I was buying Owen stock with every dime I could hoard after taxes and bachelor living expenses. I’d won all kinds of awards by working ninety-hour weeks at a dead run. I was on my way to a brilliant career.

But I was chronically hoarse from giving my spiel to doctors and druggists, and I tried not to notice that I was going through three packs of cigarettes a day, or notice the persistent tremor in my hands or the deepening frown wrinkles between my brows. I hadn’t been sleeping well of late, and I was bothered by nervous indigestion. My weight was down, and my temper was too easily lost.

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