SWEEPSTAKES PLAYERS
HELGA, HERB, and BURT—print your name in large block letters—are rehashing sweepstake gossip for me. Each is a New York civil servant: each observes fine-print contest rules and regulations with the put-it-down-right-here literalness of some AMF pinspotter. They hope to dance soon wearing mad nuptial plumage and make Dame Luck raise her fickle tail. Still, despite their rather manic enthusiasm, 1 sense enough sheepishness around to fill the room with human lanolin. When you think of a sweep player, you think of someone whose receiver is way off the hook, right? H, H, and B do not often admit in public to this zipper-headed hobby. “My father told me I was nuts,” Herb has said again. Then, as if to reassure himself, he will muse aloud, “But my father is dead now, of course.”
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