I’d bought the big wooden desk at a police auction. The little Olivetti portable had been my mother’s, as well as a reproduction of the Ufizzi hanging over my green filing cabinet. That was supposed to make visitors realize that mine was a high-class operation. Two straight-backed chairs for clients completed the furniture. I didn’t spend much time here and didn’t need any other amenities.

I hadn’t been in for several days and had a stack of bills and circulars to sort through. A computer firm wanted to arrange a demonstration of what computers could do to help my business. I wondered if a nice little desktop IBM could find me paying customers.

The room was stuffy. I looked through the bills to see which ones were urgent. Car insurance-I’d better pay that. The others I threw out-most were first-time bills, a few second-time. I usually only pay bills the third time they come around. If they want the money badly, they won’t forget you. I stuffed the insurance into my shoulder bag, then turned to the window and switched the air conditioner onto “high.” The room went dark. I’d blown a fuse in the Pulteney’s uncertain electrical system. Stupid. You can’t turn an air conditioner right onto “high” in a building like this. I cursed myself and the building management equally and wondered whether the storeroom with the fuse boxes was open at night. During the years I’d spent in the building, I’d learned how to repair most of what could go wrong with it, including the bathroom on the seventh floor, whose toilet backed up about once a month.

I made my way back down the hall and down the stairs to the basement. A single naked bulb lit the bottom of the stairs. It showed a padlock on the supply-room door. Tom Czarnik, the building’s crusty superintendent, didn’t trust anyone. I can open some locks, but I didn’t have time now for an American padlock. One of those days. I counted to ten in Italian, and started back upstairs with even less enthusiasm than before.