He shakes his head again. “No, no, no: this isn’t a tale of woe, nephew. Listen. So, my man DeAngelo, who works night shifts, is moving to Colorado next week. His last day was last week, and I paid him fifty dollars to accidentally spill coffee on her on his way out.”

“Jeez, Lion!”

“It was a cold brew, hush. But it still stained like crazy. The point is, right in front of her I made a show of losing my temper at De for the disrespect.” Lion laughs to himself at the memory as we wait for the elevator down, done with the packages. “I mean, I really let him have it. Anyway, afterward, I profusely apologized to her. On behalf of the building staff but also personally, of course.”

He widens his eye and adopts a straitlaced version of his own voice that sounds like it was born and bred somewhere in Connecticut.

“Sorry, ma’am! I apologize, ma’am! You’ll never see him in this building again!”

Accents have never been a problem for Lion.

“She’s still racist, though?” I say.

“Definitely, but now I’m one of the good ones.” His voice drips with acid on the last two words. “I get good tips, and someone in a high place knows my name if I were to, y’know . . .”

“Misbehave?”

He shrugs in that mischievous way of his that makes you want to laugh along. Even before he got his first American ID, there was never a bar Lion couldn’t walk straight into after two minutes of chitchat with a bouncer.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask, stepping into the fully mirrored elevator crowded with an infinite number of synchronized images of us staring back.

“Ask me something.”

Lionel has a way of making even his vaguest suggestion sound like the only logical course of action, especially when he’s the primary beneficiary. It’s how I ended up doing his laundry for him at least five times while he lived with us. He’d make a truly terrifying insurance salesman if he put his mind to it.

“Is being a bad influence on me your way of getting back at my dad for kicking you out?” Lionel presses for the lobby. We don’t say anything until the elevator stops again, and Lion puts a hand on my forearm, forcing eye contact.

“I don’t hate your dad, Henri,” Lion says, sounding genuine. “He and I are brothers. Family. We just work better apart. Not to play the age card, but it’ll make sense someday. In the meantime, that girl . . . you should spend some time with her. Sometimes, the only way to climb out is to realize that there are some people you can, y’know . . .”

“Use as steps?”

He rolls his shoulder. “Okay, maybe not the best, whatever, metaphor or simile or shit, but you know what I mean.”