Clockers

Strike experienced a moment of pure clarity: he would never make it out of here, would never rise above his current position as Rodney’s lieutenant, because all the intelligence and prudence and vision came to nothing if it wasn’t tempered and supported by a certain blindness, an oblivious animal will that Rodney had, that he, Strike, did not have. Rodney would survive all this not because of his guts or his brains, but because he understood that there was no real life out here on the street, no real lives other than his own, and that what really mattered was coming first in all things, in all ways and at all costs.

Strike said "Huh" again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke.

everybody was full of shit in this game. The cops bullshitted each other, the dealers bullshitted each other, the cops bullshitted the dealers, the dealers bullshitted the cops, the cops took bribes, the dealers ratted each other out. Nobody knew for sure which side anybody was on; no one really knew how much or how little money anybody else was making. Everything was smoke.

On the nights they went to bed at the same time, Rocco would lie there and watch her go to the closet, watch her choose either silky slips or mannish shirts, like running up sex flags from across the room.

the only place a man can be truly handicapped is in his mind, and that a man who can conquer his own mind has got the world at his feet.

Naw, I was like, coming from the benches.

Yeah, uh-huh.” “OK. Were you coming from a store or something when you saw him?” “Naw, I was like, coming from the benches.” “And where was he?

because, man, if this city ain't Caleb's mountain, I don't know what is, and those giants out there are just stomping people into the ground.

while before deciding to make the rounds of

York. Self-conscious about his own corrupted dimensions, he pushed himself away from the table and trotted across the traffic to the store. He almost sprained his wrist pushing on the locked door, then jumped a little at the delayed buzz of electronic permission. To Bind an Egg was about the size of

balloons, all blown up. How, where and why he got

Yeah, but I ain’t worried about it,” Rodney said,

on the roof of the Accord again, then bent down, pressed his face against the driver’s

being nice, setting him up. The glow in his belly got redder, but he also felt a new pain, a stabbing sensation, as if someone was in

In the beginning - not now, thank God - Patty was always sharing the important books of her life with him, like Black Elk Speaks, The Golden Bough, and Hero with a Thousand Faces.

were the worst—flirting with other guys in

as a reminder to himself that at forty-three you don't make plans to dabble in different lives. At forty-three, what you are, what you know, is about as far as you're going to go in this life;

out here?” he said quietly. “What?” The kid looked stricken. “Have I not treated you like a man out

Saturday was a sweet and sunny day, the kind that made people think about getting it together once and for all -- health, kids, jobs, personal appearance, doing things right this time.

Rocco drove up the West Side until they reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

splattered all over the wall, come right up off his feet like a pulled puppet just

The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity.

Rocco watched Strike limp into the human slipstream of Eighth Avenue, watched him negotiate his way through lowlifes and taxpayers until he disappeared inside the terminal doors without a backward glance.

His voice was languidly dense, as if he was a little slow on the uptake, but Strike knew that tone came from the man's feeling of complete control.

Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight.

It was time to chuck this life, with its Jo-Jos and Rodneys, its bloody burning children and walking-dead parents, just kick dirt over the whole show, like a cat burying its shit.