Grandmother, parts 2276 - 2279

 2276. Thinking such thoughts as he got home from his visit to his Grandmother, he took out from his shirt pocket the envelope and counted out his gift, the sum total was four hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty cents. “What does this mean?” he wondered, and even that thought was a good indication of how his Grandmother’s influence affected how he reasoned about things.

 2277. Ever since Coromo sent the application in and received his new credit card he had been troubled by obscure desires induced by the very card itself. His credit card offered him an available line of credit of two thousand dollars, as it was one of those “learner” credit cars of the sort offered to freshman college students. He had used it a few times but only to purchase art supplies and had been relieved to be able to pay the balance down to almost zero every month because of the sale of his paintings.

 
2278. Coromo did not like having any unpaid balance on the card, and the card itself seemed to him to radiate a kind of malignant danger. He was happy that he could pay off his balance without trouble, but he had no confidence in his picture selling income at all, and each sale seemed to him to be an extraordinary and unexpected coincidence.

  2279. After he sold a painting to a tourist he often thought that it was a lucky accident and it would never happen again for a hundred years, and even if the very next day he was to sell another it made no difference. There was something too unreal and inexplicable about it. I would have to explain it this way...