Harlem Shuffle

by Colson Whitehead

“Baby,” she said, “God tells you it’s time to hang it up, you listen.”

“That’s what he looks like,” Freddie said. “Everybody gotta look like something.”

The city took everything into its clutches and sent it every which way. Maybe you had a say in what direction, and maybe you didn’t.

Carney disapproved of criminals who bragged about their cleverness, crowed over the stupidity of their marks, whose paranoia stemmed not from caution but from an outsize sense of their importance. “Big mouth, small time,”

He was a man grasping after an impossible solution. How long do you keep trying to save something that has been lost?

“One thing I’ve learned in my job is that life is cheap, and when things start getting expensive, it gets cheaper still.”

Gnaw on a disappointment long enough and it will lose all flavor.

Carney