A cop doesn’t walk down the street like anybody else, he reflected. Automatically, he checked every doorway as he swung down Second Avenue, ignoring the pain, leaning on the bourbon. He had to prevent himself from trying the locks. Across the street, half a dozen guys spilled out of a yuppie bar, two of them mouthing off at each other, the others watching. Ten years ago, he’d have broken it up. He would have now, but it didn’t look like it would last long. The two guys turned away from each other, hurling insults. Neither was willing to throw the first punch.

At Eighty-sixth Street, two hookers were working the traffic. He’d have ignored them on his beat; he ignored them now. He remembered when Eighty-sixth was Germantown, when the smell of sauerbraten wafted from every third doorway. Somewhere along here there had been a place called the Gay Vienna that served kalbshaxe – a veal shank that looked like a gigantic drumstick. The place had had a zither player, the only one he’d ever heard. He’d liked it. He’d lived over on Eighty-third, between York and East End, had had a Hungarian landlady who made him goulash. She’d put weight on him, too much weight, and it had stuck. He’d lost it now, five weeks on hospital food. He was down to a hundred and eighty, and, at six-two, he looked slender. He vowed not to gain it back. He couldn’t afford the alterations.

Stone rubbed his neck. An hour in one of Elaine’s hard, armless chairs, leaning on the table, always made his neck and shoulders tight. About Seventieth Street, he started to limp a little, in spite of himself. In the mid-Sixties, he forgot all about the knee.

It was just luck. He was rolling his head around, trying to loosen the neck muscles, and he happened to be looking up when he saw her. She was free-falling, spread-eagled, like a sky diver. Only she didn’t have a parachute.