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So he bought tickets to the Greyhound and they climbed painfully, inch by inch and with the knowledge that, once they reached the top, there would be one breath-taking moment when the car would tip precariously into space, over an incline six stories steep and then plunge, like a plunging plane. She buried her head against him, fearing to look at the park spread below. He forced himself to look ; thousands of little people and hundreds of bright little stands, and over it all the coal-smoke pall of the river factories and railroad yards. He saw in that moment the whole dim-lit city on the last night of summer ; the troubled streets that led to the abandoned beaches, the for-rent signs above overnight hotels and furnished basement rooms, moving trolleys and rising bridges ; the cagework city, beneath a coal-smoke sky.
Nelson Algren
Never Come Morning
1942
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Nelson Algren
Chicago
They make rules that they call laws, and they call sin anything that scares them in other people. That's the truth, brother ! If they didn't shake in their boots, if they were real men, they'd have no need for police forces and law courts, for preachers and churches, no need for banks, for life-insurance, for Sunday schools and red and green lights at the street corners.
Red Lights
Georges Simenon
1953
Accident
