Söndags-smakbit #12

Bloggen Betraktelser ger oss på söndagar chansen att publicera ett litet smakprov ur en bok vi läser.
Jag läser Baumgartner av Paul Auster.
Smakbit sid.73
”-The job was worth the effort, I felt, but the apartment was loathsome, a crumbling, bug-infested dump in a wrecked neighborhood carling with junkies and an army of mad people who hade been tossed out onto the streets when the mental hospitals shut down.A ragged, rough-and-tumble time in the capital of the world, a.k.a. Fun City. Brick by brick, New York was dismantling itself. The public till was running dry, and from one week to the next the numbers kept mounting – more muggings, more murders, more stick-ups, more rapes. With so many needle-men in my neck of the woods, I would automatically clench my fists every time I walked past one of those jonesing scarecrows with the pinprick eyes, wondering if it wasn´t finally my turn to have a switchblade pulled on me as a shaky voice announced that my throat would be slit if I didn´t hand over this thing, that thing, and all the other things I was carrying right now.”