Harlem has changed, of course. I mean, I’m not talking about the 125th Street of today or even of five years ago. There’s a Starbucks there now. Multiplexes. HMV. An ex-president. This is before Giuliani saved the city. Twice. This is 1992. There are well over two thousand murders a year in New York. Gang wars. Crack killings. The New York Times publishes a murder map of Manhattan with a dot for every violent death. Once you get above Central Park the dots get thicker and east and north of Columbia University it becomes one big smudge. A killing took place yesterday at this very corner. A boy on a bicycle shot a woman in the chest when she didn’t give up her pocketbook. Those guys down there are packing heat. Shit, we’re all packing heat. The cops don’t care. Besides, what cops? Who ever sees a peeler around here except in Floridita? Anyway, it’s 1992. Bush the First is president, Dinkins is mayor, Major is PM, John Paul is the pope. According to the New York Daily News, it was 55 degrees yesterday and raining in Belfast. Which is par for the course in the summer there.

With a handkerchief I wipe away the sweat from the little Buddha fat gathering on my belly. The train is never coming. Never. I wipe under my arms, too. I stamp out the fag and resist the temptation to light another. Are people giving me looks? I’m the only white person at the station and I’m going north up to Washington Heights, which, when you think about it, is just plain silly.

The guys wearing the wool hats are West Africans. I’ve seen them before. They sit there serene and composed, chittering about this and that and sometimes scratching out a game of dominoes. They’re going downtown. On that side there’s no shade, it’s boiling on them and they’re as mellow as you please.