Played chess again with George inside the chess club this time, no kind of weather to be on the street. It was good, we each won a game, and I felt less adrift than usual.
There were guys playing backgammon, regular guys for sure, who were making a racket, especially one guy. He had some edgy game with a guy who eventually left pissed off, and then he was playing some new guy but he was still wound up from the game before.
"I don't care what you're thinkin', I don't care what you're drinkin', but if you get outta line I'm gonna set your ass on fire," he said, apparently by way of explanation to the new guy of what had transpired before. The new guy grunted in vague agreement. And then he said it again. "I don't care what you're thinkin', I don't care what you're drinkin', but if you get outta line I'm gonna set your ass on fire." And then again. He said it again and again. And silence. And then he said it again. Sometimes he'd flip around the thinkin' and the drinkin'. "I don't care what you're drinkin', I don't care what you're thinkin', but if you get outta line I'm gonna set your ass on fire." He said it again and again and again. It took on semi-comic overtones, then seemed to reach the status of mystical incantation. The rhythm always the same, the accents on the same places. A sermon-like cadence. It got to be where it stopped making any kind of sense at all, and then it got to be where you were pretty sure this was the only utterance that any human being would ever need to make, ever.
"I don't care what you're thinkin', I don't care what you're drinkin', but if you get outta line I'm gonna set your ass on fire."
Eventually the new guy grew a little bit irritated, not so much at this ceaseless, carping chant but with something in the game or something else about the guy in general. Things were said like fuck off. Other people came in, voices alternating quickly in mood and tone. Like no one could sustain ill will for longer than a breath or two.
And then the rolling of the dice.