Vital Parts Read Online Free PDF

old for this?”
    â€œI’m seventy-four,” Sweet said. “It’s not against the law to worship beauty, is it? Listen, I am on my way to New York to do something about the conditions in the ghetto. We are the richest country in the world, yet permit some of our citizens to live like animals.” He seemed to speak with real passion. Reinhart was astounded, having taken Sweet as a ruthless capitalist. “Too many older people prefer to ignore this state of affairs. They grill their steaks and suck their martinis and complain about their kids. But if the kids aren’t the hope of this country, then there is no hope. I predict an explosion unless people like you and me do something.”
    The girl was frowning. She had come back to lean on the windowsill, her breasts on her forearm. Reinhart projected his mind’s eye into the street, became an imaginary sewer worker in a manhole, saw all of her delicious behind encased in the sheerest dove-skin.
    Sweet said: “You know the militant blacks are right. The kids are right. Something must be done, and now . What is your thinking on this crisis?”
    â€œWell,” she said, “I want to do anything I can to—”
    Sweet grasped her wrist, making a depression in the jersey between her knockers, his thumb against one, little finger crooked on the other. “Bless you. You carry with you the hope of our time. I’ll be back in two days to organize a youth rally in this area. I’ll need your help. We’ll have top acid-rock groups, strobe lights, electronic environments, posters, everybody with his own thing, and telling it like it is. The ball field, Monday. Come early. You’re a pussycat.” He smoothly opened his hand and massagingly encircled her left breast. “Now wish me good luck in New York.” He kissed her generous uncolored mouth and ran the window up.
    It was of note to Reinhart that she nodded through the glass and walked around the hood in apparent self-possession. He watched until she turned the corner and disappeared. She never looked back. Her stride was full-juiced, on sturdy tan thighs bare almost to the cheeks.
    Sweet said: “Do you know she put her tongue down my throat, the little twat? Well, there you are, Carl. You can knock that off if you want to represent yourself as my advance man for the rally. If that’s your taste. Though why it should be, I don’t know. Maybe you are attracted by the illegality of it.”
    Reinhart said: “You could be put in prison for what you did.”
    â€œNo,” said Sweet. “ You could.”
    Reinhart had not recognized the girl, but might well know her name. No doubt the offspring of some other old schoolfellow, one who had stayed locally like himself to spawn a family, and was held in contempt by the adolescent members, felt obsolete and out of it, feared Negroes, and was driven to impotent madness by rock music and the threat of a youth takeover.
    â€œWhat gets me,” said Reinhart, “is that you really sounded sincere.”
    â€œOh, I might have been, except about wanting to screw her. I told you there was money in Negroes. There’s more in youth. I know a man who made a half-million last year in posters, buttons, psychedelic clock faces, and the rest of the garbage they buy. Being a father you must be aware that their allowances are more than a salaried man earned all week when we were kids.”
    â€œYes indeed,” Reinhart said fervently, touching reality’s base for once. “But Bob, forgive me for the question. Don’t you have to be pretty callous to play it your way?”
    â€œCallous,” Sweet repeated quickly. Yet he did not seem offended. “No, far from it. Nor hypocritical. If I were colored, I would be militant. If I were young, I wouldn’t trust anybody over thirty. I would scream when my own ox was gored, or even pretend it was when it was not. I would get mine . I am