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Europe provided its own revelations about the cost of living. When the S.M.A.P. first went to inspect the rubble-strewn wreckage of Germany, $1 was supposed to be worth ten reichsmarks, but the real unit of currency was the American cigarette. A carton cost $1 at the PX and could be sold on the street for 1,000 reichsmarks, except that nobody used reichsmarks; one swapped. The strange thing was that people went right on smoking. The S.M.A.P., who chain-smoked in those days, never did have much talent for finance. He declined an offer of a harpsichord for six cartons of cigarettes (a harpsichord nowadays costs as much as $15,000). The last time he was in Germany, he paused at the Frankfurt airport just long enough to have a cup of coffee, which cost him $2. He was, as usual, surprised.
All financial transactions are, of course, a kind of swapping, in which money is merely a convenient symbol for work or scarcity or an unusual idea. When the S.M.A.P. feels nostalgia for the 55¢ ticket to the bleachers at Fenway Park, he has to remind himself that he earned $20 a week as a police reporter on the Des Moines Register. A generation earlier, when Vice President Thomas Marshall bemoaned the passing of the 5¢ cigar, Dreiser's Sister Carrie found a job in a factory for $4.50 a week and was happy to get it. Some of the most interesting swaps can hardly be priced at all.
When the S.M.A.P. sold his first novel, he invested the entire advance in a shaky jalopy so that he could stop commuting to work on a bicycle. The car was no good, but neither was the novel; neither lasted as long as the S.M.A.P.'S surprise.
When the S.M.A.P. eventually reached his father's eminence and became a $10,000-a-year man, the object of his surprise was the price of his children's shoes, which seemed to need replacing every few months. On discreet inquiry he discovered that Harvard had more than doubled the parental paycheck in the intervening years, and the S.M.A.P. remained close to what is now called the poverty line. At a dinner party given by prosperous friends who then lived in an apartment overlooking the Hudson River, he raised the question of how much one must earn to live well in New York City, not luxuriously but well. He knew his hostess was extravagant, but he could only be surprised when she said, "I can't imagine anyone doing it for less than $50,000."
Having heard recently of Manhattan apartments renting at $10,000 a month—even $15,000—the S.M.A.P. tried again to discover what the good life should cost, but the other players proved balky. This is the era of blue jeans, and materialism is considered gauche.
"What does living well mean anyway? said one ot the guests, who jogs. "You want to go to the opera, and you're mad that an orchestra seat costs $50, but I don't want to go to the opera."
"If we have it, we spend it," said his wife. "If we don't, we don't."
"That's what you get for the cost of living," said the husband.
"You live."
By the rules of the S.M.A.P.'S game, such philosophizing was not an answer to the question of how much it would cost to indulge in the revenge of living well. He ventured a wild guess of his own: $200,000. Nobody seemed surprised.
—By Otto Friedrich