Assault on a Queen

"Well, what have I done with the last five days, for example? Warm, sunny, beautiful days — the first we've had in months, and a part of the little handful like them I'll ever have to be alive in. I sold them — " I was leaning toward her, staring into her eyes, trying to make her understand — "each of them for less than a twenty-dollar bill! I spent them sitting at a desk, all six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds of me. And when they were nearly over, I got the last bits of them, the tag ends, for myself. Once a week I get a couple of days, or a day and a half, or not even that much often as not. And once a year, a two-week vacation. Is that all I get — of my own life?" I nodded. "Almost! If I give in and accept that, if I keep on selling off my own life — all of it, by God; all my youth and middle age! — why, I'll finally be given the last few years of it that are left as a sort of refund. Retire on a pension at sixty-five not even knowing any more what else there is to do with a man's life except work it away."