Too much that he can’t change and can’t forget. They also know that I left Chelsea soon after I lost my arm. They don’t know that I’ve been straight since that day; and they remember the juvenile bandit, but they are not sure about me. They don’t know that I came back to Chelsea only because I wanted to stay in one place for a time now and that one of the things I have learned is that it does not matter where a man lives because he lives inside himself anyway and that a man’s home is easiest to hide in. But they are uneasy about me sometimes.

I was born in Chelsea, so I’m not an outsider. But, somehow, I’m not quite regular. So I’m in a kind of limbo where people know me, will talk to me, will even help me at times. They will often tell me what I ask, but they will be wary when it comes to talking about someone who might not want me to know what I ask about him. They are not sure about me. And in Chelsea people like to be sure about a man. In fact that was what almost cost Jo-Jo Olsen his life, but I did not know that then.

What I knew was that two more days of work had left me as ignorant about Jo-Jo Olsen as the day I had started and that no one was talking to me about Jo-Jo. I also knew that it was hot, that it was looking more like Jo-Jo Olsen had just taken a trip he had not told Pete Vitanza about, that I could make better use of my time by spending it with Marty, and that I could think of no more good reason to work hard than I could ever think of.

‘How about hunger, thirst and me,’ Marty said.

Marty is one of the reasons I decided to stay in one place for a while. We’ve known each other three years now, and her name is on my life insurance. That does not tempt her, which says a lot about her character these days when you read about kids who kill their parents for the insurance money to go to college.

‘That’s not enough,’ I said.

And it’s not. A man does not need much money to eat, sleep dry, and get enough to drink to quiet the voices in his head or the pain in an arm that isn’t even there.