Harry and Tyrone’s effort to finance a heroin business begins as a confident scheme to turn a small purchase into a self-sustaining operation, and quickly becomes a test of whether either man can separate dealing from his own addiction. They talk of cutting the drug, doubling their money, and becoming independent of street hustling; to raise the initial stake, they eventually accept exhausting newspaper-loading work. The plan’s promise of control is undercut at every step by their appetite for the product, their hesitation about work, and the practical risks they treat as manageable.

The Business They Imagine

The idea first gathers force while Harry and Tyrone are high. Harry’s cigarette burns his fingers and drops from his hand; he retrieves it slowly, lights a fresh cigarette with the old one, and savors the smoke. The drug, he reflects, makes a cigarette taste especially good. From that bodily pleasure, the conversation turns to commerce: buy a piece, keep a taste for themselves, cut the rest, and sell enough to double their money. A modest transaction expands, in their talk, into repeated purchases and eventually a pound of pure heroin.

The pair imagine that they can remain users without becoming dependent dealers to their own habit. Their proposed discipline is to take only enough to stay straight, keep the business money intact, and avoid the heavy use that, they believe, has ruined other men. They picture buying directly from Italian suppliers, cutting the heroin themselves, and having dependent users sell it for them. In their imagined end state, they will no longer hustle on the streets: they will sit back and count money, with a large Cadillac as a visible sign that the scheme has succeeded.

Their joking visions of future comfort make the plan sound both intimate and expansive. Tyrone imagines a fine home near Central Park, tailored suits, and a different color for every day of the week; Harry riffs on the prospect of chauffeuring him. They even set a festive deadline, imagining that by Christmas they will be rich enough to count their profits. The banter gives the fantasy a shared life, but it does not make its assumptions any sounder: the men’s confidence rests on their belief that they can handle the very drug they already want to use.

From Ambition to a Fundraising Problem

When Harry and Tyrone later sit in the park and decide to pursue the purchase, the grand plan contracts into a specific sum. Tyrone estimates that they should bring about four hundred dollars, allowing for uncertainty in the deal. He is confident that Brody can obtain a piece for them and that, even after Brody takes his taste, they will have enough to cut the supply, double their stake, and reserve some for themselves. Harry agrees with the arithmetic but stresses that he does not want to get strung out or lose the money by using too much.

Finding the cash is the immediate obstacle. Tyrone says he does not want to rob anyone, and Harry draws a distinction between pawning his mother’s television and committing a robbery. Their joking suggestion that they sell hot dogs briefly turns their predicament into a comic image of mismatched roles: Tyrone would sell, Harry would handle the food, and they might settle who adds the mustard by flipping a coin. The laughter does not solve the problem. It allows them to acknowledge that they need money without yet knowing how to get it.

Tyrone recalls that men go to the newspaper-loading jobs around four or five in the morning. He dislikes the prospect of working, as does Harry, who is dismayed by the hour, but the possibility of decent clothes and cars suggests that the job pays enough to matter. They agree to investigate. Harry plans to go home so that he can sleep and get up on time, reasoning that telling his mother he has a job will help ensure she wakes him. The new routine is framed not as an end in itself but as a short passage toward the heroin purchase.

Work, Delay, and the Return of the High

The resolve does not hold steadily. After they hear that a young user has died from an overdose, they worry that the available heroin may be dangerously strong and that more people could die if it is not cut enough. Yet, once they feel mellow, they decide there is no point in going to work the next morning; they do not want work to spoil a good high, so they head to Tony Balls’s loft instead. The moment exposes the plan’s central contradiction: the money-making scheme requires restraint and regular effort, while the immediate pleasure of getting high repeatedly takes priority.

They do eventually show up for newspaper work, among the first to arrive after Marion hustles them out of the house. Few other men have come, so everyone is put to work. Before leaving, Harry and Tyrone take Dexies, which make them feel unusually quick and energetic. On a hot, humid night they throw bundles of newspapers into trucks, laughing and talking as they work. When they finish loading one truck, they move to another and work with such speed that the other workers warn them not to set a pace that will make management expect the same from everyone. The men’s energy looks like a brief triumph of effort, but it is chemically sustained and out of step with the steady routine their coworkers are trying to preserve.

The workers share cold beer with them and explain that they want to keep the job from becoming more demanding. Harry and Tyrone accept the warning and settle into a less frantic pace. After the trucks are loaded, they buy more beer for the group; later, wine dulls the sharp edge of the Dexies. They work extra hours and calculate how much they will earn, treating the night’s labor as progress toward the piece they want to buy.

The expected immediate reward fails to arrive: they learn that they will not be paid that night, but must wait until the end of the week for their checks. Tyrone voices his frustration that working is strange enough without working and not getting the money. Harry recasts the delay as an advantage, arguing that a single payment will be harder to waste before they have enough for the purchase. The practical setback therefore becomes another occasion to reassure each other that the scheme remains intact. The evidence establishes the delayed payday, not whether or when they receive the money or complete this particular purchase.

A Plan Overshadowed by Its Consequences

The early scheme’s language of self-command is increasingly at odds with the men’s circumstances. They plan to reserve only a taste for themselves, but the conversation repeatedly returns to how much they enjoy heroin; they promise not to become dependent, yet their decisions about work are already governed by the high. Their willingness to take Dexies to perform strenuous labor further blurs the line between earning money and managing one drug experience with another. The business is imagined as a route out of street dependence, but its first steps are already entangled with drug use.

Later scenes in the novel give the ambition a harsher frame. On the journey south, Harry and Tyrone encounter open hostility at a gas station, where a mechanic stares at them and spits; Tyrone urges Harry to leave rather than escalate the confrontation. After their arrest, a police officer assaults Harry and makes clear his hostility toward New Yorkers who use drugs. Tyrone’s subsequent confinement brings a different consequence: a guard taunts him, uses physical force, and subjects him to exhausting labor while Tyrone suffers severe withdrawal. These events do not change what the pair intended when they sought their first capital, but they reveal how little protection their imagined business success could offer against addiction, violence, and coercive authority. The Christmas prosperity they joked about belongs to a fantasy of control; the later journey shows the cost of trying to pursue it.