SLOUCHING OUTSIDE the 7-Eleven, my partner, Matt, looked more than usually gloomy. The “South Pacific,” our best-earning phone booth — it had a prime location near the Slurpee machine—was a mess: palm fronds torn out, ship’s wheel gone, the model volcano completely inoperable. The coin box had withstood the assault—not that it held enough to cover the damages. Repairs would have been easier if Ginny had chosen a more austere look, but she insisted that all three of our pay phones adhere to a unifying theme: the American musical theater. I had to admit, the customers liked it.

Ginny is my cousin. She’s studying interior design on the new GI Bill. She has excellent color sense and fabulous legs, but that temper of hers nearly got her bounced out of the Navy when she went at a CPO with a tube sock full of ball bearings.

“It could be worse,” Matt said. “If they’d trashed ‘Kiss Me, Kate,’ we’d have to dig up another Elizabethan receiver.”Our first pay phone, it’s just outside the bus terminal.

“Or relacquering ‘The King and E— what a hassle!” We were kidding ourselves, of course: we felt awful.

After we cleaned up, we went over to Ginny’s place. She was sitting in her pickup out in the carport, impatiently tapping her long fingernails on the steering wheel. We downplayed the damage to the phone as Ginny drove; if she picks up two more points, she loses her license.

The three of us walked down the long center aisle of the vending-machine wholesaler out near the fairground, trying to ignore machines we couldn’t afford, like Oxygen-to-Go, the Beef Mart, with all that great neon, the Puppy Palace. Way in back, under a tarp, there it was—Le Canard Diabolique, named 1983’s most thrilling children’s ride by Canadian Coin-Op magazine. Children? Maybe brave Quebec enfants, but here in the States it would be strictly thirteen or over unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. I dropped a Canadian quarter in the slot —we’d have to retrofit for U.S. currency—and offered Matt a go.

“Not me,” he said. “I still have that cervical vertebrae thing from Brenda.” Matt’s girlfriend, the JV wrestling coach at Mt. Penn High, is an enthusiastic Latin dancer. Matt threw out his back doing the merengue, but certain people (Ginny) still snicker suggestively.

He was right to treat the duck with respect; it’s some ride. At first it bobs along placidly, lulling you into false confidence. Then it’s like it suddenly spots food beneath the surface—a tiny fish, a Cheerio, a Gummy Bear. The big duck dives, pitching forward nearly sixty degrees. After that it’s a mallard in a hurricane, so hang on tight and remember that the owner-operator disclaims liability for personal injury.

With Le Canard strapped down in the bed of Ginny’s pickup, we headed for the Oley Valley Mini-Mall, where we unloaded the duck and left Matt to hook it up. I rode back to Ginny’s, collected my car, and drove down to the police station to report our vandalized phone booth; I had to for the insurance.

Le Canard was part of my diversification strategy. With deregulation, anyone could buy a pay phone, and people who had gone bankrupt on topless transmission centers and swim-through tropical-fish aqua-parks got that goofy dollar-sign-in-the-eyeballs look. Phone booths were a turbulent business, and I wanted protection.

Not that I didn’t make my share of mistakes. I joined the mob flocking to hot locations, paying an insane amount to become the eleventh booth in a line stretching down the side of the McDonald’s nearest the high school. Day after day I’d sit in my car in panicky despair, watching no one enter my booth. The price wars started when Ricky Enslin introduced Family Hour: between 6:00 and 7:00 A.M., call any relative, second cousin or closer, anyplace in Berks County, for a nickel. I tried to compete. I still have the sign on the wall of my office (actually, it’s just the spare bedroom, where I stack my change) as a reminder of how not to run a business: “ENJOY A COMPLIMENTARY MUG OF VEGETARIAN CHILI WITH EACH LOCAL CALL.” Every time someone dialed, I lost about sixty cents. And then I lost my wife, who called from my own booth to say I could forward her chili to Portland: she was leaving me.

The water-main break in the McDonald’s parking lot brought in enough insurance money for me to survive that critical first year when most businesses fail. But there’s always something. Lately it’s slugs. To save a quarter people shove the damnedest stuff in there—flattened Sprite bottle tops, model-car hubcaps, thin slices of hot dog wrapped in tin foil.

I to MADE shower, IT HOME shave, with and plenty change of time into my tux, but I slipped on a puddle of uncounted quarters and tore my trousers too badly to repair with a stapler. 1 grabbed my only other pair of black slacks and ran a strip of electrical tape down each leg, a semblance of a satin stripe. It’s this kind of improvisation that makes me a natural entrepreneur.

Driving over to Ginny’s, I thought about expansion. I wanted a fourth phone booth, probably “Damn Yankees.” And I had my eye on a Swiss two-franc Auto-Groom. Twenty seconds after you wedge your head into the clamps, those high-speed oscillating blades have given you as neat a trim as you’d get from an actual barber.

Ginny looked terrific, of course. She admired my tux, and when she smoothed down the strip of tape that had begun curling up my right leg, the pounding of my heart fluttered the ruffles on my shirt. As we pulled into the mini-mall, she spotted Matt and Brenda running chamois over Le Canard Diabolique / The Devil’s Duck, as the bilingual sign described it. Matt was in the powder-blue tux he wore at his old job, selling popcorn at the Hexaplex.

I handed Ginny a bottle of Cold Duck, my little joke. “I declare this duck open!” she said, and swung the bottle. A crash, a spray of champagne, and then everybody was kissing everybody else, except for me and Matt kissing each other, of course. Then I showed my friends a tiny replica of Le Canard; Toby O’Brien, down at the Hobby Hut, had made it up. I planned to present it to our first customer. We stood around, eager with anticipation.

“Great dress, Brenda,” (Jinny said a few minutes later. “Is that Spandex?”

“It’s like Spandex, but it’s not actual Spandex.”

“Well, you look great. I’ll bet you still have the lowest percentage of body fat of anyone in our class.”

Everyone’s legs were getting tired, and the girls were wearing heels, so I suggested we sit in the car for a few minutes, “just until someone comes along to ride, ride, ride the wild duck,” I sang. Nobody laughed.

Matt walked over to the Quick Pick to get a six-pack and some peanuts. Ginny began scanning the radio up and down the dial in that way that’s so irritating when anybody does it but you.

Brenda stuck it out for one beer, and then she had to get back to school. Her wrestling team had a meet, she said. It seemed kind of early in the season to me.

Ginny kept checking her watch. Her interior-design class was doing carpets and wall coverings that evening. Matt offered to drop her on his way home.

Around seven-thirry the streetlights came on, so there wasn’t any chance that darkness would conceal my first patron, who’d probably be along any minute, as soon as the next show at the Hexaplex let out.

In Japan people buy sweaters from vending machines. T he street-corner auto-nurse draws blood samples. Coinoperated colleges can take you all the way to a B.A. They always give change. They’re never vandalized. I wasn’t worried. I was riding the future.