The place was empty at ten thirty in the morning on a Friday, except for a scruffy twentysomething fellow drinking coffee and reading the New York Times, and the waitress, a cute hippie-looking blonde, also in her twenties. I ordered a coffee. I wasn’t thinking about much. I was sort of high or something. High on the folly of all that I had been doing. But not high in a good way, more like I was out of it, dazed. It didn’t help that I had probably slept only about three hours.

Then G came in. He was my height, about six feet, and had a muscular V-shaped torso discernible underneath a gray sweatshirt with a hood. He had shiny black hair, which was greased back, and he was good-looking, nice features—a straight, elegant nose, big eyes, masculine chin. He had light brown skin, and, like Shiny the bartender said, was probably in his early thirties. There was a scar on his right cheek, not too pronounced but visible. We made eye contact and I didn’t like the way he looked at me. My heart stopped and he came over to me, sat right next to me, instead of across from me, put a switchblade right against my belly, and said, “Let’s talk outside. I’ll rip you up. I don’t give a shit. Just walk out with me.”

“I haven’t paid for my coffee,” I said. Why this occurred to me, I don’t know.

“Put the money on the table and fucking walk out,” he said. The waitress was sitting at the bar with her back to me, and the boy with his paper didn’t even look up. Music was playing loudly on the stereo system. They were in their own worlds.

I put a five on the table, it was the smallest bill I had, and G walked behind me and led me outside to a big car, a sky blue Chevy Caprice, with fancy rims. I knew it was a Caprice. I’d had one years ago. He had a friend in the front seat at the wheel and we sat in the back.

We drove a few blocks and then turned right on Coffey, which is a long block of warehouses that leads to the waterfront and the moribund, long-dead Red Hook piers. Manhattan was across the river and to the right, gleaming and rich. Straight ahead, about half a mile away, was the Statue of Liberty. It was a beautiful day out—clear and bright.

Spanish music played on the radio and they didn’t say anything. I hadn’t gotten too good a look at the driver, but he seemed younger than G, probably in his early twenties, and from the backseat I looked at his shiny black hair, which was cut close to his scalp, so you could see the skin between each individual hair. His neck and shoulders were fat. He was a fat boy.

“Is G your full name or just an initial?” I asked.