Invasion of Privacy

godforsaken fucking place with chain-link fences and barbed wire, like five hundred of the guys per compound. And one day, there’s an attack.”
    “Attack?”
    “Yeah. Must have been locusts or grasshoppers or something, but I guess the prisoners just went nuts, account of they thought it was like the plague from the Bible and the fucking bugs were gonna eat them. So apparently this same MP captain—he wasn’t their commandant like that Klink guy from Hogan’s Heroes, he had to come from somewhere else—he yells at them through an interpreter again to get back, get back into the center of the compound. And then the captain, he takes a flamethrower—a fucking flamethrower—and starts frying these bugs, on the wire, in the air, you name it.”
    “Sounds wild.”
    “It gets better. After the bugs incident, I guess the real commandant decided he ought to do something for the prisoners, they been scared out of their fucking wits and all. So he asks them, ‘What do you guys want to do?’—as kind of a break, you know? And they tell him, ‘We want to go see Hollywood .’ They’ve been captured in a fucking world war, but everybody knows about Hollywood , right? So the commandant, he tells them, ‘I’ll take you out there a couple, three busloads at a time.’ ”
    “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “Uh-unh. Enrico says the prisoners were real well-behaved in the camp, and Hollywood turned out to be only a few hours away from where they were. I guess the commandant got all these Italian prisoners GI American uniforms, but no insignia on them. Enrico said he thought there’d be some kind of ‘shoot-us-like-we-was-spies’ problem if the commandant gave them patches and stuff. So, they troop onto these busses, in American uniforms, and go to Hollywood, where—get this—the guards let them leave the buses and fucking walk around, see where the actors had their stars in the cement and all.”
    “This really happened?”
    “Hey-ey-ey, Cuddy, what do I know? I wasn’t there, but Enrico says he was, and the way he described things, I’m inclined to believe him. Well, anyways, they’re walking around Hollywood when this same MP captain—the one who moved them from Indiana and fried all the bugs?— comes roaring up in a jeep to the bunch of guys Enrico’s with and just goes bullshit on them. In English, of course, but Enrico said you could kind of catch the guy’s drift in any language. And then they ah had to get on the buses again and back to the compound. The rest of the prisoners never got to see Hollywood , and Enrico says he never saw the camp commandant again.”
    “Great story, Primo, but how was the gambling?”
    “Huh?”
    “In Atlantic City . You went there to gamble, right?”
    “Oh. Oh, yeah. Picked up almost four thousand on one of the tables.”
    “Roulette?”
    “Right, right. But I gotta tell you, I like watching the suckers play the slots almost as much as gambling myself. The machines, they’ve changed most of them over to a computer thing now. Totes up your money, keeps track of it like a bank account, all you got to do is look at the screen.”
    “Sounds like expensive equipment.”
    “Yeah, but you know why they did the changeover?”
    I thought about it. “So the suckers don’t have to waste gambling time by feeding in the quarters.”
    “You got it. Good example of what can happen when higher technology falls into the wrong hands. Of course, there’s a row or two of the old-fashioned machines, too, the jobbies with the big handles? They keep those for the illiterates, I guess, the ones get scared off by anything like a computer. Anyways, I’m walking along, and this rickety broad—had to be eighty she was a day—is pulling the lever on one of the old machines so hard and so fast, you’d have thought she got paid by the quarter herself. Only thing is, she all of a sudden lets go of the handle and grabs her chest, like she’s having a heart attack. The rickety broad hits the floor, and there’s at least three other old people rushing to take her place at the machine, thinking, ‘It’s gotta pay off now, right?’ Then this young broad next to me says, ‘What do you suppose happened to her?’ And I say, ‘Maybe all the blood rushed to her wrist.’ ”
    A laugh from Primo. “Get it?”
    “I got it.”
    “You just don’t think it’s funny, am I right?”
    “That’s right.”
    The toothpick rolled from port to starboard this time. “Good thing the