Goodbye Watson Summary

The narrator describes what happens when a day of gambling goes poorly, and he concludes that he must be mad to return to the horse track and make bad bets every day. Nevertheless, the track teaches him about himself in the same way the bullfights teach Ernest Hemingway: they reveal his weaknesses and the constant rate at which he changes.

Before he began attending horse races, the narrator frequents a boxing club, where he always picks the quietest fighter to win. The scene inside is always rowdy, with the gamblers standing ringside screaming for their fighters to win. The narrator has some success with a boxer named Watson Jones, until one night when Enrique Balanos knocks Jones out. That night, heartbroken, the narrator goes home with a beautiful woman. They sleep under an open window and wake up soaking wet and...