I wanted to get my nephew out of a jam before he got into one.
This is a sentiment I bear toward all humanity.
My successes in its prosecution are, sometimes, trivial.
Besides which
a man who thinks he is soon to die
enjoys kiting around in a city he has cherished all his life, among the people he loves, at night, in a cab.
I rode up through the marble lobby and past the floor-ledges of the building in the gold elevator cage with the colored boy whose face showed no trace of his fascinating, perennial opportunity to look upon (before and after) the persons and countenances of hundreds of the great, the prominent, and the rich, who were not quite satisfied with the legal sex mores of their environment and the permissions of their acquaintances.
I inhaled the many-doored hallway.
"Hattie," said Viola, "is out at a party."
"Is my nephew Paul here?"