telephone number and little else. I was twenty-one. I figured I’d wait to call mythical Chris Kelly, shot in the arm by Nina Simone. I’ll get situated first, I thought. I’ll have some sense of what I’m doing, a way to make an impression on him. Then I’ll call. I knew no one else, but downtown New York was so alive with people my age, and so thoroughly abandoned by most others, that the energy of the young seeped out of the ground. I figured it was only a matter of time before I met people, was part of something. My apartment was about as blank and empty as my new life, with its layers upon
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