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looking around. ‘On the other side of the goddamned plane,’ he muttered. ‘I put us together, brother, I swear it. Hell.’
    ‘It’s alright, Chip,’ I said, all of a sudden feeling friendlier. ‘Don’t you mind it. I’m like to sleep the whole way anyhow.’
    Chip nodded, miserable. ‘Well. Maybe they’ll let me come over once we get under way. Maybe the seats’ll be free.’
    Then he was gone, settling in on the far side, and the stewardess was stalking up the aisle stowing bags and kits and purses. And then we was lifting up off the tarmac and tilting steeply, rising up into the ether. I gripped my old armrests and stared out the cabin windows at the clouds. It was too grey to see much of the city below. Before the seatbelt light come off I’d downed two sleeping pills and drawn the blanket up to my neck.
    Well, I thought drowsily. A man ain’t but one kind of crazy.
    I could see Chip leaning out into the aisle, trying to catch my attention. I leaned back, closed my eyes. Berlin, I thought. Hell.
    Chip looked worn awful thin by the time we set down. More long grey tunnels, checkpoints, passports and the like. Then we was sitting on a tight little bench at the luggage carousel waiting for my damn suitcase to clatter down. It didn’t come. We watched two green bags turn on the slatted ramp, vanish, come back around again.
    ‘They lost it,’ I said. ‘I fly once in fifteen years and they lose my damn luggage.’
    Chip nodded. ‘I ain’t lost a piece of luggage in near forty years. Good thing, too, cause the stuff ain’t cheap, boy.’
    I looked at his matching luggage, all monogrammed, high-end leather, set out beside him in descending order of size like a damn family of suitcases. ‘Ain’t that something,’ I scowled. ‘How about that. You just one amazing traveller, ain’t you.’
    He chuckled. ‘Aw, Sid, I just saying. It’s alright. I’ll lend you some clothes for the premiere tonight.’
    ‘I ain’t going to need your clothes. They going to get me my damn suitcase.’
    ‘Sure they will,’ Chip said encouragingly. And I got that funny dark feeling in my chest again, like something was real wrong. It ain’t normal , Chip being this friendly.
    At the luggage counter a man with a natty little moustache told me my luggage ought to arrive at the hotel before me. It been rerouted by accident to Poland. But it coming right back, sure.
    ‘Poland!’ Chip laughed, as we stood in line at passport control. ‘It just going on ahead of us, to let Hiero know we coming.’ And later, at the taxi stand, he said again, ‘Poland, Sid. Think of it. That ain’t so far your suitcase can’t go there and get back to your hotel before you even arrive. Hell, that’s close, brother. Closer than DC to your old Fells Point pad.’
    I scowled and looked away.
    On the drive in I told the cabbie to swing us by the Brandenburg Gate. I’d sat up front to get some space from Chip but he just kept leaning on forward, breathing his damn cigarillo breath down my neck.
    ‘I don’t know, Sid,’ he said. ‘I reckon we should just check in. We got the opening in less than three hours.’
    ‘The Brandenburg Gate,’ I said again to the cabbie in German. And to Chip, ‘It be alright. You just relax some. Sit back and see.’
    Sure, I admit, some part of me was just trying to spite him. But I was curious, too. The city’s new hugeness shook me. It’d always been big, but not like this – the war opened great holes all those decades ago and I could see them even now. Green parks broke up the sea of cement, and so many concrete lots sat empty, all gone to weed. The streets looked wider than I remembered, too. As we passed the Berliner Dom, I got a vague itch all high up in my throat. My god. That vast pillared Renaissance church – it’d shrunk . Looked timid, apologetic, like a man brought down in the world.
    Chip set one big grey hand on my seat and leaned forward as the cabbie turned up the broad avenue of Unter