You send the beef in bowling shirts and shitkicker boots every Sunday morning to collect from the perennial poor in the claptraps you own on Stone Avenue. Rumor has it the hobbled wretch who begs at the five and dime offered lip instead of money and they showed him out through a third floor window. Dad’s mom lived on the fourth floor of #720. A refugee from the shtetl she was well prepared to live without heat or running water, to navigate the teeter- totter stairs in the half light of a 40 watt bulb, to coexist with roaches and rats, the acrid smell of cabbage, untended garbage, and the methodical cruelty that humans without hope inflict on one another. I know you. You have the health and building people in your ample hip pocket and while you might hire some people to spit shine your shoes and some to break legs, you spend every Sunday night counting and recounting the stack of smalls, the nickels and dimes— because for you, Donny, a sumptuous view of the New York skyline can never compare to the heft of a roll of nickels.