Outside the Coney Island haunted house the operator, a big guy about forty, leaned on a rail and spoke to a couple of ticket takers, high school guys on summer jobs.

The cars were mostly empty. Here and there a mother and daughter, a father and son, darted around the corner to be plunged into the black portal, grimacing with apprehension.

“Open a checking account and a savings account,” the man said.

The boys nodded.

“Start a credit card. Open a line of credit and buy some shit.”

A few moments passed and a few more empty cars rattled past the gates of the inferno.

“Don’t buy too much shit. You’re establishin’ credit.”

One of the boys murmured something I could not hear.

“One-fifty, one-fifty. One-fifty in checking an’ one-fifty in savings.”

The group fell silent. All the cars were gone now. The stretch of track that ran out front, past the turnstile, glinted in the August sun.

I watched and listened on the train today, riding into Manhattan with the family. A rich young man, impeccably dressed and coif’d, stood with his legs planted wide apart in the middle of the car. He was speaking to a woman who must have been his girlfriend, or his wife. I overheard fragments of his speech. “I’m just very annoyed,” he said. “I’m very frustrated. First of all there’s the thing of you getting ready.” I couldn’t hear her responses, which were offered plaintively here and there. “And then you spend all afternoon with someone else,” he went on. “I’m very annoyed. I’m frustrated.” I examined his expensive leather boots and his designer jeans, turned in a single, narrow cuff. His double-breasted pea coat with the strap of his messenger bag slung tight across the front like a belt of ammunition.

Money won’t save you.

A dreary mantra plays in my head as I lift my groggy head out of bed, step into the shower, walk down the street to the bus stop:

Hundreds of dollars.

Hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars. Sometimes like an old folk song, or maybe I'm just thinking of the line in that Jimmie Rodgers song: "She took a hundred dollars to buy me a suit of clothes." To buy me a suit of clothes. That delightful, unnecessary repetition: suit of clothes, not just plain suit; it was crucial to the rhyme of course but in the end it doesn't sound contrived, it sounds perfect. She didn't just buy me a suit, she bought me a suit of goddamn clothes, for Christ's sake.