When the Thrill Is Gone Read Online Free PDF

Evil and you have a civilized prole.
     
     
    I CLIMBED OUT of the Ninety-sixth Street station behind an old white man who had to take the steps one at a time. His baggy green trousers were held up by bright red-and-blue suspenders worn over a gray woolen sweater. There were people coming down the other side, so I couldn’t go around.
    “Hurry it up, will ya, man?” a voice behind me said but I had no intention of interfering with the oldster’s pace.
    “Hey!” the voice insisted.
    I stopped and turned to face a thirtyish young man dressed in a style of someone ten, or even twenty, years his junior: a blaring red T-shirt with a writhing form drawn upon it and jeans that hung down on his hips. He was white but that hardly mattered. He could have been any race and still held the same misconceptions as to his place in the world.
    At first the young man thought he could bowl right over me. After all, he did his exercises and watched kung-fu movies. So I held up a hand like a steam shovel.
    He stopped and gave me the look—that gaze of resentment and threat that has yet to reach a physical aspect.
    “If you’re lucky,” I said before he could announce his own undoing, “you will one day get to be old enough and infirm enough to have some young man yellin’ at you to hurry it up. If you’re unlucky you’ll lay hands upon me.”
    The young man took half a step back. He thought about attacking, and then thought better. I watched him for the appropriate amount of time and then resumed my climb.
    I love the subway system and the people it brings together. It’s better than any sitcom or pop song. The subway and its nerve centers are like a jazz sonata, bringing the past into the future—all the generations crammed together in dissonant and almost unbearably sharp focus.
     
     
    OTHER THAN THE FACT that it was constructed from glazed white brick instead of dark red, the building was nondescript. Nineteen stories high and taking up nearly the whole block, it had two fire-escape systems that I could see—one in the front down the middle, and the other cascading down the side, leading into a fenced-in alleyway.
    I look for fire escapes wherever I go. This because of a dream I used to have every night and that still recurs now and then. I’m in a burning building, on a high floor, and there’s no escape . . .
     
     
    THE DOORMAN WORE an immaculate red-and-blue-trimmed uniform. The costume itself didn’t set him apart from others in his profession but the punctilious attention to detail spoke reams about his persona.
    He was a coffee-and-cream-colored man and, of course, taller than me by half a foot or more. He moved into the doorway at the top of the stone stairs to block me. To him I might as well have been a young man in a garish red T-shirt and slouching jeans.
    “Can I help you?” he asked.
    He had a beautiful voice. If his mother had paid more attention, or had his father been more understanding, he might at that moment have been preparing to sing opera in Cleveland, or maybe Orlando. Instead he positioned his big gut in my face, a living shield for his betters.
    “Leonid Trotter McGill for Cyril Tyler.”
    “Who?”
    “Which ‘who’ do you wanna know about?”
    “Say what?” He had a good scowl, but I had a great left hook and so was unimpressed.
    “I mentioned two names,” I said. “And in answer to my declaration you asked ‘Who.’ ”
    “I never heard of a Cyril Tyler.”
    “Then either this is your first day on the job or you’re stupid.”
    He took one step down the granite stairs.
    “Why spill blood and teeth when you could just pick up the phone, brother?” I asked.
    A friendly voice is often the most threatening.
    He looked at me and pointed. “Wait here.” And then went to his little vestibule to make the inquiry.
    I wondered if Cyril had a private exit; if he had ever walked in or out the front door.
    I took a deep breath, and then another. Events had been tumbling down too fast and