To Another Something

         And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities. You bought old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn't so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind a gas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing still. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren't a kid any more.

Jim Thompson
A Hell of a Woman
1954