A Dance At The Slaughterhouse

“You got some kind of a jones. I just can't make out what it is.”

“Maybe I haven't got one.”

“On this street?” He whistled tonelessly. He had a round face, a button nose, bright eyes. I wondered if my five dollars would go for a vial of crack. He was a little chubby for a crack head and he didn't have the look they get, but then they don't get it right away.

“On the Deuce,” he said, “everybody got a jones. They got a crack jones or a smack jones, a sex jones or a money jones, a speed-it-up or a slow-it-down jones. Man ain't got some kind of a jones, what he be doin' here?”

“And what about you, TJ?”

He laughed. “Oh, I got me a jones jones,” he said. “I all the time got to be knowin' what kind of a jones the other dude's got, and that be my jones, an' that's where it's at, Matt.”