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close the door and wonder if it’s better to have an empty large refrigerator or a full one. There’s a white ceramic bowl on the center island full of change. I pick through it, taking the nickels and dimes, leaving the quarters, as though big-change larceny would be too great a crime.
    There’s a big window in the back of the house. It’s double height. It rises up through a void in the ceiling above. The mullions are aluminum, glazed with large panes of tempered glass. The curtain-wall spans the width of the building with one centered glass door. It’s a structure unto itself. Like everything else in the house, it’s unadorned. It looks out on the backyard, which isn’t much, gravel, an unused sandbox, two soccer goals, and the neighbors’ tall cedar fences on all three sides. There’s no ocean, river, woods, or great lawn to look upon—functionless modernism. It may well have been a mirror—two stories tall, twenty-five feet wide—the giant mirror of Brooklyn. People could come from far and wee to look at themselves in it.
I could run the whole thing for you, Marco. I’ll only take 20 percent. It’ll pay off whatever it cost you to put it in within the first year.
I realize I don’t know how much it cost, how much the whole house cost to buy and renovate and furnish. I don’t have any way to price the glass, the metal, the labor, the markup. Marco had asked me my opinion on the quality of the work overall, the natural maple doorjambs and stairs and cabinetry—not with any bravado—he just wanted to know if he’d been treated fairly. I never told him anything. Perhaps he’s still waiting, though it did seem strange, the master negotiator, asking me forreassurance. What could I say to him now? I’ve stolen his change and watched his building fall.
    I take the money and go out. I have a twenty in my pocket, too, but I don’t want to break it—not on coffee. Breaking it begins its slow decline to nothing.
    I’ve forgotten that people go out, even on weeknights. Smith Street, which used to be made up of bodegas and check-cashing stores, looks more like SoHo. It’s lined with bars and bar hoppers, restaurants and diners. Many of them are the same age I was when I got sober. There was a time when people spoke Farsi and Spanish on the streets and in the shops, but now there’s white people mostly, all speaking English, tipsy and emboldened with magazine-like style. They peer into the windows of the closed knickknack emporiums that have replaced the religious artifact stores and social clubs.
    It’s hot but not muggy. I walk north with the traffic, trying to stay curbside so as to avoid getting trapped by meandering groups and hand-holding couples. I hop the curb and walk in the gutter to get around the outpouring from a shop. There’s a party going on or breaking up. Inside there are paintings hanging on the wasabi green walls. There are small halogen track lights on the ceiling. Their beams wash out the paintings. Nobody’s looking at the work.
    â€œHey!”
    I can tell whoever is calling is calling for me. It’s a woman’s voice—full of wine and cigarettes. A bus approaches. I have to step up on the sidewalk toward the voice. She’s standing in front of me.
    â€œHey,” she says again in a cutesy, little girl way. Her hair’s in pigtails. Her face is as hot as the lights. “I know you.”
    Her name is Judy or Janet or something close to that. Her daughter was once in a tumbling class with X.
    â€œHello,” I answer. I’m a foot taller than she is. I can’t help but look down at her. She looks up at me, still smiling.
    â€œJeez, I never realized you were so tall. Now I know where that boy of yours gets it.”
    â€œActually,” I say, looking over her into the crowd of partygoers—I don’t recognize anyone—“I was a small kid. I grew after