“This will not always be my business. I want money,” he said, rubbing his fingers together. “Six hundred thousand to start a big business. Now all I have is a house and a Peugeot, that is all.”
We left the gym together and took the subway uptown. We made small talk on the ride, and he told me the only tiger he had ever seen was in a cage in the Liverpool zoo. My stop came first. I got off the train, and looked back at him through the window. In his clothes again, he was just a chunky man in a too-small homburg, hanging from an overhead strap, jostled by a rush-hour crowd.
Robert Lipsyte, “Pride of the Tiger,” The Atlantic, 1975
