Master of the Smoking Mirror

It's raining when I arrive, hot close drizzle. Stare out of the cab window; it's not the city I remember, and it is. Gives me a tight sick sort of feeling, like the beginnings of a hangover.

His apartment's in a better building than I expected, a solid middle-class neighbourhood. The super, short and broad and scowling, lectures me as she takes me up there, gives me the key: Everything paid up, she says, as if it's an insult, until the end of next month, and how can I let it? Who will rent it when a man has died there? When all his goods are there, still? I shut the door firmly in her face, lean my back against it as if she's going to break in.

The sparseness of it's too familiar, too like my own place. Nothing of the boy, the young man, that I remember. He was always neater than me, and he's gone about this like he went about most things, methodical, respectable. No clothes discarded on chairs, the kitchen clean. The fridge empty, though that could have been someone else. Bed against one wall, sofa against the other, tiny kitchen and bathroom. Almost a hotel room.

The bed's made up, hospital corners like my mother taught us. I feel my jaw clench hard.

I drop my suitcase to one side, my carry-on on the sofa. I'm tired and stiff from the flight, and I just want a fucking drink.

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