“Okay,” Frankie said, “that’s what I’m saying. You can take it or you can leave it alone, and that’s fine. I wished I was you. But me, this’s at least ten apiece the guy’s talking about. You don’t want the ten, all right. But I do. And I haven’t got no place else to get it. You have.”

“Not that much,” Russell said. “I’m not gonna get ten out of this. Five, seven’s more like it. No ten. You gimme ten and I’ll be gone so fast it was like I never was here. I know exactly what I’m gonna do, I get that kind of dough. But, I don’t have to get it from what he’s gonna, that he’s got in mind to do. It’s gonna take me a while longer, but I can get it from what I’m doing anyway, and that, that’s on balls, see? Balls. It’s something I think up myself, how I’m gonna do this. So, the guy don’t like me? All right, I still don’t have to kiss his ass, I don’t want to. Fuck him. So it’s up to you and him. It’s up to you guys. You want me, you want me in this, I’ll come in. He’s the guy with the big ideas. Fine. You want to go and get somebody else, also fine. Don’t matter to me.”

A blue and white train pulled in from Cambridge. The doors opened. An elderly drunk stood up unsteadily, ignored the doors open behind him and lurched toward the doors open in front of Russell and Frankie. He wore black suit pants and a white dress shirt and a greenish checkered jacket. He had not shaved for several days. There was a large red bruise on his left cheek. His left ear was bloody. His black shoes were open along the welting and his bare bunions protruded. He made it most of the way across the car before the doors shut. He bent, reaching for the curved edge of the orange seat with his left hand. It was bloody at the knuckles. He reeled backward into the seat. The doors shut and the train departed for Dorchester.