Лестер Дент: Honey in His Mouth

One thing for damn sure, he thought, Mr. Hassam had been wrong. Mr. Hassam had told him that he could never grasp how much sixty-five millions was, could not grasp such magnitude. Well, Hassam had been dead wrong, because Harsh could figure out how much sixty-five millions was. He could do that, all right. If he paid out one dollar for each breath he took, that would be paying out about fifteen dollars a minute, wouldn’t it? He counted his own breathing through what he estimated to be one minute. He timed the minute by counting chimpanzees the way he did in the photographic darkroom, “One chimpanzee, two chimpanzee,” and so on. One minute, fifteen breaths. All the minutes in one hour were sixty, which times fifteen was nine hundred dollars an hour. That times twenty-four for one day, that was how much? Nine hundred times twenty-four was twenty-one thousand and six hundred dollars. That was one day. In dollars. All the days in the year were three hundred and sixty-five if you didn’t screw around with leap year, and this times twenty-one thousand and six hundred dollars per day was still only, what, seven or eight million? He lay back. His breath came and went with such dryness it parched his lips. So sixty-five million was all the breaths you could take in five, six, seven, eight years, with change left over. It was a lot of honey for no one to taste, ever. That was sure.

If he had it, maybe he could use it to buy those eight years. But he didn’t have it, not a penny of it, and he didn’t have any eight years either. Or eight months or eight weeks or eight days. Outside the cell window he heard the stamping feet of the descamisada, the shirtless ones. He remembered enough of the Spanish Mr. Hassam had taught him to know they were calling for his blood.

Eight minutes —how much would that cost? He counted desperately on his fingers. Hundred twenty dollars. It would take four or five sales calls with his camera to earn that. His camera. He wondered what had become of it.

Eight seconds? Could he even buy eight seconds more of life? It would only cost a dime or so. One thin dime. Surely he had that much on him somewhere!

He was still feeling of his pockets when they came to his cell to collect him.