Literary Chicago: Ernest Hemingway - "The Snows of Kilimanjaro And Other Stories"

Sigh. Some things never change.

"Listen," the detective said. "This isn't Chicago. You're not a gangster. You don't have to act like a moving picture. It's all right to tell who shot you. Anybody would tell who shot them. That's all right to do. Suppose you don't tell who he is and he shoots somebody else. Suppose he shoots a woman or a child. You can't let him get away with that. You tell him," he said to Mr. Frazer. "I don't trust that damn interpreter."

"I am very reliable," the interpreter said. Cayetano looked at Mr. Frazer.

"Listen, amigo," said Mr. Frazer. "The policieman says that we are not in Chicago but in Hailey, Montana. You are not a bandit and this has nothing to do with the cinema."

"I believe him," said Cayetano softly. "Ya lo creo."

 - from The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio

"What's he going to do?"
"Nothing."
"They'll kill him."
"I guess they will."
"He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago."
"I guess so," said Nick.

- from The Killers

Tuesday, Nearly Midnight (Keep Chicago Weird)

Via Calumet 412

On the Green Line two men get on, I don't remember where. Somewhere past Central, heading downtown from the West Side. It might've been Laramie. They both sit in the aisle facing seats, one directly across from me, the other three seats to his right. One of them had a red, personal grocery-cart you only see old ladies, college kids in the South Loop, and bums with. A man that smelled like urine had already sat down next to me; we'd both of us got on at Harlem. Sadly, a man on the train who looks dirty and smells like piss is barely enough for me to think about; I kept my head buried in my book. City livin'.

So these two new men get on. The one that's across from me starts talking about someone who was hit by a train at 35th in Bronzeville. Then another was hit and killed on the West Side. When's he's not talking, he's snorting. He's trying to remember when it happened. Six, maybe five, four in the morning? More like 3 AM, he finally decided. The Green Line doesn't run that late, his friend said. After a minute of silence, he realized his faux pas. "I wasn't trying to contradict you," but Bum 1 turns away. He took out a pack of cigarettes. I think he was using the papers to roll a joint but I was engrossed in this book or at least tried to look like I was and make myself part of the background (as I typed all of this on my phone on the Blue Line a little while later, someone else has begun smoking cigarettes). 

Bum 2 turns to the urine soaked dude. "My man. We got the same hat." It was a black beanie apparently with a Nike logo . "Black folks don't wear this," he said. "Only white folks and Europeans. I got mine for 38.65. Almost 40 bucks I paid for this hat. Tell you what, jack. I'll buy yours offa you. Ten bucks?"

Urine offers a mumble-laugh. "You said it was almost 40."

 "15, man, I'll give you 15 for the hat." No response.
"25." Nothing.
"30." Nothing.
"35. Man, I'll give you 40." He keeps going til 50 and he still won't give up the hat. Meanwhile Bum 1 starts nodding off. Bum 2 does the same before waking up again. "I was just messing with you, man," he revealed to Urine, before giving some sound economic advice. "But if anyone ever offers you 50 bucks for a hat again, I don't care, you take it. You hear me?"

By the time I'm at Clark and Lake and close my book, all three of them are nodding off, like three tramps at the end of the first act in a Samuel Beckett play. Could you imagine the stories Beckett would write if he lived on the West Side of Chicago?