"I was just waiting," he muttered to himself. "And so are they."
* * * * *
The newspaper reporter looked eagerly at the street and the people
passing. That was it. He had found the word. "Waiting." Everybody was
waiting. On the back porches at night, on the front steps, in the parks,
in the theaters, churches, streets and stores--men and women waited. Just
as the men on the grass in Grant Park were waiting. The only difference
between the men lying on their backs and people elsewhere was that the men
in the grass had grown tired for the moment of pretending they were doing
anything else. So they had stretched themselves out in an attitude of
waiting, in a deliberate posture of waiting. And with their eyes on the
sky, they waited.
The newspaper reporter felt thrilled as he thought all this. He felt
thrilled when he looked closely at the people in Michigan Avenue and saw
that they fitted snugly into his theory. He said to himself: "I've
discovered a theory about life. A theory that fits them all. That makes
the background I'm looking for. Waiting. Yes, the whole pack of them are
waiting all the time. That's why we all look alike. That's why one house
looks like another and one man walking looks like another man walking, and
why figures lying in the grass look like twins--scores of twins.
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