Nelson Algren

‘It's all in the wrist 'n I got the touch,’ Frankie was fond of boasting of his nerveless hands and steady eye. ‘I never get nowheres but I pay my own fare all the way.’ Frankie was regular.

‘I'm no good but my wife's a hundred per cent,’ somebody down the tier confided aloud to everyone in hearing distance. / ‘Mine stinks,’ Frankie Machine thought softly; immediately his conscience kicked him in the shin. ‘I got a good one too,’ he answered loudly to make up for everything. / And his conscience kicked him in the other shin for lying.

‘Any time you want me, Captain, just phone by Antek, he'll come 'n tell me I got to come down 'n get arrested. I like gettin' locked up now 'n then, it's how a guy stays out of trouble. I'll grab a cab if you're in a real big hurry to pinch me sometime – I don't like bein' late when I got a chance of doin' thirty days for somethin' I never done.’

‘There's only fifty cards in your deck tonight, honey,’ Frankie reproached her gently. ‘I think you got a little repercussion again today.’ / ‘You mean a concussion, dummy.’ For once she had him. / ‘No, I mean a repercussion. Like you been bounced on your head twice.’

‘I can get in more trouble in two days of not tryin' than most people can get into in a lifetime of tryin' real hard – [...] It's 'cause I really like trouble, Frankie, that's my trouble. If it wasn't for trouble I'd be dead of the dirty monotony around this crummy neighborhood. When you're as ugly as I am you got to keep things movin' so's people don't get the time to make fun of you. That's how you keep from feelin' bad.’

That night, while the little twenty-watt bulbs burned on in a single unwinking fury down the whitewashed tier, Frankie Machine was touched by an old wound fever and dreamed, for the second time in his life, of the man with the thirty-five-pound monkey on his back.

‘I never run for streetcars,’ he'd had the brassbound nerve to tell her the year she was seventeen, after standing her up for half an hour in front of the Pulaski. ‘What's the use? There's always another big red rollin' along right behind. Just like you dames – soon as a guy misses with one all he has to do is look back over his shoulder 'n here comes another down the block pullin' up for a fast pickup.’ / ‘I just won't stand for that kind of talk,’ she'd told him flatly, stamping with rage. ‘I want you to be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be 'n dressed like you're goin' to the Aragon, not to shoot six-no-count pool by Wieczorek – that's what I want.’ / ‘There's people in hell want ice water too,’ he'd grinned at her.

[The turnkey] watched the pair mounting the narrow steps toward a narrower freedom. On the street they waited for a northbound car. / A car that came on slowly, but not too slowly for Frankie Machine. If it would just sort of keep on coming forever, like streetcars sometimes did for him in dreams, without ever really arriving, he wouldn't have to go anywhere any more. The dealer didn't want to go home. Sophie did all the dealing there.

When he wakened he would see her in the corner where the light and darkness met, half her face in the fading shadows of Saturday night and half in Sunday morning's rain-washed light.

‘You must of been readin' about that couple in the paper, their car caught fire.’ / ‘What happened to them?’ Her breath felt cut off. [...] / ‘They were trapped, that's all.’ / ‘Oh.’ With relief. Things that happened out of town never seemed to have happened to real people somehow.

Frankie sat on the curb [...] wondering how to get the booze off his breath in a hurry. / ‘You kids got a stick of gum?’ he whispered to two ten-year-old girls studying him placidly, both of them chewing like twin calves side by side. One came up with a single dirty stick, its wrapper long unpeeled, and offered it just out of Frankie's reach. / ‘Joosy Froot. Only cost you a nickel.’ Her accomplice nodded approvingly. ‘That stuff is pretty hard to get these days, mister.’ / Frankie found a lone dime and when the girl had it safely in her hand she advised him further, in lieu of a nickel change, ‘You don't have to worry about that stupid bull, mister. He's as stiff as you are.’ / ‘He can fwisk you but he can't search you,’ the other told him softly, with the softest lisp possible. ‘Don't let him search you without a wawwant.’

‘She got too big a heart, that girl,’ Antek explained of Molly when John had left. ‘A guy can walk into her heart with army boots on.’