I knew the games were basic small cons that worked on tourist gullibility and greed, and I went by without even stopping. I grinned as I watched the confidence games being played by sidewalk hustlers - giant showy posters and pirated tapes for sale, and shell games of various kinds, especially the one using three cards on a cardboard tray held by a strap around the neck.
When I left the theater Wednesday afternoon, I walked east along Forty-second toward the small circulating library on Forty-first and Fifth Avenue, where I was to wait for Greg Reece, a young friend who had lived with us for awhile and now worked in New York. But I went to see Dustin Hoffman in The Death of a Salesman (bought a ticket at the last minute from a scalper), so it must have been two years earlier on my way to Boston. IT MIGHT HAVE been 1986, because Easter came in March and I was on my way to Montreal.
