"I've come to like aggravation," Kuperman replied. "Within reason. It's part of life, part of the game."

"What'd you need the game for? Enjoy life. Watch the sunset. Gaze at the stars. Do you want them to drag you out of your business feet first?"

"Someone's going to drag me out of someplace feet first, so it might as well be from my place of business. Besides, if I retire, what do you suggest I do? Chase golf balls with the rest of the morons? Maybe I should take courses in Chinese stamp collecting or the history of Peru at Loch in Kop University downtown?"

"Milton, my friend, there's got to be more to life than close-outs."

Kuperman knew Schapiro had his best interests in mind. He liked Lou Schapiro — little Louie Schapiro as he first knew him at Humboldt Grammar School and later at Roosevelt High, the shortest kid in class who went on to win the gold medal in the state CPA exam at the age of twenty. But Schapiro didn't — couldn't possibly — know what was in his, Kuperman's, heart.

"Of course there is, Lou, but what concerns me is what is left of me if you take my work away. I'm not sure that there's anything left."

"Whaddya mean? You read. You're a thoughtful guy. So quit working and just think, at your own pace, with no pressure on you at all. Maybe travel a little. Does that sound so bad?"

Kuperman could have turned the tables and asked Schapiro why he didn't retire. But then Lou had a son in the business, and he himself now came in only three days a week, chiefly to take care of old clients like Kuperman, who would have felt strange with their business in the hands of anyone else. 

As for Kuperman's capacity for leisure, true, he was a reader, mostly of biography, especially of the biography of scientists. Had he gone to college, he would have liked to have studied engineering. Growing up when he did, engineers and inventors — Ford, Edison, even Charles Lindbergh held a few patents — were the great heroes of the age. But that wasn't any longer a possibility. One of the saddest things about growing older, Kuperman long ago concluded, was the closing off of one possibility after another.

Kuperman's only concession to retirement was to begin going into the office later in the morning: at ten o'clock instead of his usual time of 8.30. He continued to wake at 5.30am as always. Although he said he didn't believe in the current exercise fad — "I'm a fatalist," he liked to say. "When you're number's up, it's up" — Kuperman did use the early part of the morning for walks around the neighbourhood. In the bad weather, he walked in the mall off McCormick Boulevard near his apartment on Touhy Avenue off Kedzie at Winston Towers.