You had it all wrong. We sat in a wine bar in the depths of Alphabet City, damp and dark as a subway platform after a week of showers. The quartet played smooth jazz and the singer, once famous, now long past middle age— distilled the loneliness and grief of a hundred years and gave us back a bit of Nina and Billy. We drank the deep red wine of a sourish grape and, as we had no future, we talked of our shared past. It had been ten years and I thought you might be repentant. But you told a story of misfortune and failed ventures— the record shop in East Harlem, the bookstore in Astoria. You spoke heatedly of the villainy of old friends— people I knew well, and of mine. Shocked, silent and angry I couldn’t believe how you lied and lied. I left you in the neon glare of that all-night diner on First Avenue— eggs seven ways for those without a home worth going to and walked the city streets in the emptiness of early morning. The wind was cold and clarifying and I thought, maybe I had it all wrong.