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was feeling every one of his seventy-three years. Decades of living to excess had finally caught up with him. There were only so many knocks and scrapes a body could take before it was wrecked. But what man thought about becoming dust when he was shining like a diamond?
    It was early; not yet dawn. And, typically of late, Tolstoy was sitting astride a toilet, sweating, trying to pee what felt like bits of broken glass through an inflamed urethra.
    His wife had reminded him he was no spring chicken. She’d urged him to slow down, to take things a little easier. After all, it wasn’t as though they couldn’t afford the hired help; they were comfortable , with bank balances in the black. Shouldn’t he be sitting back and enjoying the ride instead of driving down the fast lane with his foot stomped on the gas?
    A year ago, she’d warned him to listen to his complaining body or pay the price if he didn’t.
    Ten months later, the debt had been called in.
    With watering eyes, Tolstoy caught sight of his ghostly reflection in the bathroom mirror and let out a labored breath. The aging black man glaring back at him was still a hulk by all comparisons, still the stuff of children’s nightmares, but he could see where his affliction had melted muscle, turning hard slabs into sandbags. He wasn’t stupid; he knew it was only a matter of time before he faded away altogether, and the thought made him all the more determined to make his final days count.
    An acidic trickle drilled its way through and he gasped with pain.
    Cussing under his breath, he finished up and then made his way to the back of the house, stooping through doorways as he went. This wasn’t his home and he didn’t know his way in the dark. A man called Blake lived here. Tolstoy didn’t know Blake and Blake didn’t know him, but between them they did know a mutual acquaintance, and that was the reason for the visit. Politely, Tolstoy had introduced himself, by profession and connection rather than by name, and Blake had been accommodating, to a point.
    “Man, I am so sorry about that,” he said to Blake as he entered the dimly lit kitchen. “I got this thing going on, you know? Damn nuisance. And no amount of medication hits the spot.” He ran himself a cool glass of water and glugged it down in one. Maybe it would force his bladder to play ball? Probably not.
    Blake was standing at the breakfast bar. He was a thin-faced guy with salt-and-pepper hair and shifty eyes. There was no blood on his lips, no blackened eyes or broken teeth, no facial evidence to show he’d been roughed-up, but he had been. Verbally. There was real fear carved into his panicked expression, the kind of fear that causes a grown man to wet himself all over the kitchen floor.
    Unexpectedly, Tolstoy was jealous.
    “Please,” Blake implored him quietly, “I’m begging you. Don’t wake my wife. She’ll be up anytime soon as it is. You need to be long gone from here before then.”
    Tolstoy stuck out a ledge of a lip. “That a fact? So what worries you the most, Mr. B—your lovely lady finding out you spent the rent money on cocaine, or the fact you’ve pissed yourself all over her clean kitchen floor?”
    His words came out a shaky whisper: “You don’t need to do this; I said I’ll give you the money.”
    “Sure you did. And that’s mightily generous of you. Seeing the error of your ways and wanting to make amends is commendable. Good for you, Mr. B. But it’s my job to make sure you understand the danger you’ve put your wife in. That way, it’ll never happen again.” Tolstoy moved closer and Blake visibly cowered. At eight foot tall, and even in his seventies, Tolstoy had the menacing presence of a standing bear. “See, I could have just as easily slipped in here, nice and quiet, and slit her throat while you both slept. But I didn’t. This is your one and only warning. You with me, Mr. B?”
    Blake let loose a snotty whimper, nodded tightly.
    Both of his hands were