Up the hill. It’s only two blocks but by some freak of geography it’s really the equivalent of about five.

I reach in my shorts for my keys and turn on 123rd. Vinny the Vet is ahead of me going in the building, having a full, angry conversation with no one at all. His shopping bag clinks. Danny the Drunk is on the corner in the sun propping himself up. That purple face is leaning down over his walking stick, dry retching. And me as the third representative of the Caucasian race on the street, what am I like?

Aye, what indeed.

Keys, pistol. Pistol, keys.

Nerves are bad.

Keys. But the lock is screwed up and I have to jiggle it. Must tell Ratko, not that he’ll fix anything. But guilt-ridden by his laziness, he will invite me down for some foul Polish vodka and Serbian delicacies prepared last year or so by the missus. But at least in my warped brain it’ll be home cooking.

Sounds like a plan.

It’s 1992 and Serbs are beginning to get a bit of a bad reputation. But it’s not so terrible yet. Ratko’ll pour me a full tumbler of something clear and awful and we’ll toast Gavrilo Princip or Tito or the memory of the bloody Knights of Kosovo and I’ll have a cold sausage-and-lard sandwich and another glass and when the drink is sweating me close to a bloody heart attack I’ll slink away and stumble up the three floors to the apartment.

Second thought, no.

Inside, Freddie’s there doing the mail.

Freddie, I say, and we talk for a minute about sports. Freddie can see I’m beat, though, and lets me go. Nice chap, Freddie.

Go up the stairs. The door. Keys again. Inside. Hotter here than the street. I put on the telly for company. Free cable somehow. I look for something familiar and settle on Phil Spector and John Lennon and some irritated long-haired session musicians being lectured by Yoko Ono on chord progression.

Run the bath. Water comes out brown. Sit on the tub edge and have a brief premonition of the phone ringing and me picking it up and it’s Sunshine, come over all ominous, saying that Darkey wants to see me.