every other man

The light outside the main entrance to our building has gone out again. The heavy metal door swings wide as I pull a hat down over my ears. In the darkness there are maybe twenty teenagers standing still. My boot scrapes across the ground, slowing down. Their hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, I look for a space to pass between them. A voice appears, saying hello in English, with an obvious accent. I am all instinct, saying pivyet as I pass, not looking back, wondering who said this. There was a boy that was an extra in Blackbetty that lives in our building, but he is too young, too short for it to have been him.

I look back, navigating the puddles in the street. It does not make any sense.

N is with V, making their way home. I meet them, pulling V into my arms as she chatters about her day, about dry leaves and princesses, about her grandmother's apartment and what she ate there. We are going back home, and I try to explain the odd collection that stands outside. As we pass through them, one speaks up in a quiet voice. He asks N if there is a drunk man in a black coat inside the building. Of course she does not know. The young man explains that this man beat one of them up, and that they are waiting for him to show himself.

Inside, a woman in a tattered velour housecoat leans against her apartment door near the old elevators. N asks her if she knows anything about this. The woman mumbles something, it could be that she said, "Every other man is drunk, in a black coat."