In “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets,” we are not told exactly how long Tom Benecke has been taking notes on the yellow paper that flies out his window. We are told a few things about how long he has worked on it, but we are not given a sum total of the time that he worked on it.
What we know comes from the paragraph right after Tom realizes that there is no way...
In “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets,” we are not told exactly how long Tom Benecke has been taking notes on the yellow paper that flies out his window. We are told a few things about how long he has worked on it, but we are not given a sum total of the time that he worked on it.
What we know comes from the paragraph right after Tom realizes that there is no way for him to retrieve the piece of paper while remaining inside his apartment. He realizes that he cannot reach it and begins to be upset about the idea of having to abandon it. At this point, he thinks about how much time he has spent on it.
In that paragraph, we find that he spent “four long Saturday afternoons” making notes as he watched customers in grocery stores. We also know that he took notes from trade journals that he read “page by page in snatched half-hours at work and during evenings at home.” Finally, we read that he had gone to the library and “spent a dozen lunch hours and early evenings adding more” notes to the paper. Clearly, then, he has spent a very long time on these notes.
The time he has spent on the notes, plus their importance to his career, cause him to risk his life in an attempt to get the paper back.
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