Hells Kitchen

be priced at a thousand bucks. The men looked over the site, saw nothing else of interest and drove off.
    Bailey called, “Let it go, Pellam. Go on home. Let it go.”
    *   *   *
    The Eighth Avenue subway line offers no service for the time being, due to police action.
    We are sorry for the inconvenience.
    Riders are advised . . .
    John Pellam considered waiting but like most passengers on the Metropolitan Transit Authority he knew that fate was the essential motorman of his journeys; he decided to walk downtown to a cross street where he could catch an Eastbound bus to his apartment.
    He disembarked from the grimy subway car and climbed up the stairs of the station into the city.
    West of Eighth Avenue, stores had closed and mesh gates covered windows.
    Dusk was long past and the sky was filled with a false sunset—the radiance of city lights from river to river. This fiery canopy would last until dawn.
    “Yo, honey how ’bout a date?”
    West of Eighth, children had been put to bed. Men had eaten their hot meals and were sitting in their scruffy armchairs, still aching from the hard routine of their jobs at UPS or the Post Office or warehouses or restaurants. Or they were groggy from their hours upon hours in bars, where they’d squandered the day talking endlessly, arguing, laughing, wondering how love and purpose had eluded them so completely throughout their lives. Some of them were in those bars again now, having returned after an evening meal with a silent wife and noisy children.
    In tiny apartments women washed plastic dishes and marshaled children and brooded about the cost of food and marveled with painful desire at the physiques and the clothing and the dilemmas of the people in TV shows.
    It was a night like a hot stone but here the old buildings weren’t wired for air conditioners. The hum of fans filled most apartment and some not even that.
    “I’m sick. I’m tryin’ to get a job. I am, man.”
    West of Eighth, clusters of people sat on doorsteps. Dots of cigarettes moved to and from lips. Lights from passing cars reflected amber in quart beer bottles, which rang against the concrete stoops with ever-changing tones as their contents emptied. Conversation was just loud enough to rise above the rush of traffic on the West Side Highway, thousands of cars fleeing the city, even at this late hour.
    “Give me a quarter for some food. Got a cigarette. Have a good night anyway. God bless.”
    In the windows of tenements lights flickered, the emanations of TV, and often the hue was not blue but the pale gray of black-and-white sets. Many windows were dark. In some there was only glaring light from a bare blub and a motionless head was framed in the window, looking out.
    “You want rock, ice, meth, scag, sens, blow, you want you want you want? You want a lotto ticket, you got a quarter you got a dollar you want some pussy? Yo, I got AIDS, I homeless. Excuse me, sir. Gimme your motherfucking wallet . . .”
    West of Eighth, young men loped down the street in their gangs. They were invincible. Here they’d live forever. Here bullets would pass through their lean bodies and leave their hearts intact. They glided along the sidewalk, carrying with them their own soundtrack.
    It’s a white man’s world, now don’t be blind.
    You open you eyes and whatta you find?
    The Man got a message just for you—
    Gonna smoke your brothers and your sisters too.
    It’s a white man’s world.
    It’s a white man’s world . . .
    One crew saw another across the street. Boom boxes were turned down. Glances exchanged. Then signs flew back and forth. Palms up, fingers spread. At some point bravado would become dissing. If that happened guns would appear and people would die.
    West of Eighth, everyone was armed.
    Tonight, though, faces turned away, the volume cranked up again and the crews moved in separate directions, surrounded by a tempest of music.
    It’s a white man’s world. It’s a white man’s . . .
    Lovers grappled in cars and beside the sunken roadbed of the old New York Central Railroad, near Eleventh Avenue, men dropped to their knees before other men.
    It was midnight now. Young dancers hurried home from the topless clubs and peep shows. Broadway actors and actresses too, just as tired. Among the stoop-sitters, cigarettes were stubbed out, good nights were said, beer bottles were left on the sidewalk, soon to be scavenged.
    Sirens wailed, glass broke, a voice called out in ornery