Just one of oh-so-many perfect exchanges of dialogue from easily the best year-2008 novel to have crossed my desk to date:

“We’re on the same side here.”
“You know what? … The very fact that you think it’s necessary to reassure me of that tells me we’re not.”
               —Richard Price, Lush Life (p397, ARC)

Man, ain’t that the truth?

While social politicking isn’t exactly ‘war,’ there’s no doubt that we all get embroiled in more (hidden or less hidden) agenda-driven conversations than we suspect. Every day.

I’m sure that someone tries to drop the “same side” trick on me two or three times a year. It wasn’t until reading reading Price’s crystal-clear—and, as the man’s readers (not to mention fans of The Wire) have come to expect, street-legit—response that I realized why I have never felt comfortable whatsoever in the face of that statement.

It’s a declaration of an agenda, disguised as a friendly reach-out, the worst kind of manipulative: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a Greek (Ancient Greek, that is) bearing a gift.

And you know you can trust me on this, because I’m looking after your best interests, here. Like I always do.

Lush Life is out in trade paperback on March 3.