The key wouldn’t fit. There were only two keys on the metal ring with its yellow plastic fob from Lucky Bastard Lounge off I-95: one for his apartment and another for the mailbox. His bookie already had the Volvo key. Unu kept at the lock, but nothing doing. The Medeco dead bolt wouldn’t budge. Was he on the right floor? His door? At his feet, near the pile of newspapers he’d neglected to bring in earlier, a squiggly length of masking tape affixed a thick envelope to the hallway brown carpet. From the city marshal’s office. His name typed in blurry carbon. In it, he recognized the photocopies of the notice of eviction papers he’d been served several weeks before. Unu tossed the envelope on the floor with his keys.
George Ortiz was tying up stacks of magazines with twine in the basement. The regular weekday porter left the monthly recycling jobs for George, who did not mind organizing-type work. Tidy cinder blocks of glossy periodicals formed a low wall along the corridor connecting the laundry room to the back-door exit—the harvest of an evening’s labor. The elevator dinged its arrival. George’s handsome round face contorted with worry. He nodded hey to his friend.
“The city marshal came by. Hernando changed the locks,” George told him, volunteering all that he knew. “You okay?”
Unu nodded, more lost than angry.
“I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know how to call you, man.”
George’s pool buddy, the only resident of the ninety-four-unit building who had ever invited him to hang out, had aged this past year—thin lines fanned around his dark eyes, a patch of gray had formed smack dab in the heart of his right part. Usually these Oriental guys looked ten years younger than white guys, but Unu looked older than his age. George had worried about his friend, so much so that he’d mentioned it to his wife, Kathleen, and she’d said in her usual patient manner, “George, honey bear. You are not responsible for everyone. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.” But in all this time, Unu had not mentioned why he didn’t have a job, why that girl Casey left without taking most of her stuff or coming back for it, or why he hadn’t paid rent in three months so that the management company had to throw his ass out. The super had told him this before working on the locks.
“I asked Hernando, and he didn’t know, either. . . how to reach you.”
“No, of course not. That’s all right,” Unu said. No one was responsible for this but himself.
George liked Unu’s reserved manner. The Korean was someone who’d be tagged as a quiet brother in George’s neighborhood in Spanish Harlem. It wasn’t as though Unu were shy, because the hermano talked, but it was obvious that he was preoccupied with some deep shit, and when you hung out with him, he’d ask you thoughtful questions about stuff you knew. He listened carefully to your opinions on landfills, salsa, and Catholicism. Unu believed in labor unions, while George called Unu naive about those organized thugs. You’d shoot a couple of games with him at Westside Billiards, drink a few bottles of beer, and it wouldn’t hit you until you were on your way home that you’d done all the talking while the two of you were together, and that no one so smart had ever listened to you so respectfully, and that time and attention were a kind of present that you couldn’t buy. Yeah, Unu was a brother who liked his privacy, but George did not mind that.
“You have a lawyer or something?”
Unu shook his head no. He brushed his right hand through his hair, long overdue for a cut.
“You got a place to stay?”
Again, Unu did not answer. Because he didn’t know.
George felt terrible for him. But this guy had gone to college. Besides, weren’t Koreans rich compared with the people from Puerto Rico? They owned all those giant bodegas with neat-ass piles of oranges, and they hired Mexicans and Guatemalans to peel potatoes for their salad bars and break down the endless stream of boxes in the smelly basements. Their women owned nail salons and wore diamond rings the size of your eye. Frankly, he couldn’t remember who owned all those dry cleaners before the Koreans came and took over that job. And it had happened so fast. They had taken over—fast. The folks from P.R. were doing all right, but they weren’t like the Cubans, who were more successful like the Koreans. What was the matter with him? The brother was a real nice guy. But he didn’t have a single friend who could take him in for the night? I mean, really, c’mon now. If Kathleen threw his ass out, he could call up half a dozen buddies or ask his sister if he could sleep on her sofa. But no matter, the hermano was not talking. He looked as if someone had hit him, but there was no blood.