James: So how has work been this week?

Andrew: The same, tiring, except for one day getting home. I normally go into town further from the jobsite and shoot back out [traces a V with his hand] to get home. But the other day there was some traffic jam so I decided to go west and then cut across a street I recognized. I chose Biddle, which ends at Edison Highway in East Baltimore, not far from home.

James: Biddle is great. The Number fifteen bus runs through there. I even wrote the last scene of a novel on Biddle.

Andrew: [Shakes head] I’d like to know what war East Baltimore lost for Biddle to have a bomb that big dropped on it. Christ! Entire blocks were…gone. Others had no occupancy, just boarded up. There was this one block I drove down and I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is the last block at the end of Time.’

“On this block [makes brackets with hands out to the side and palms facing each other] there was not a single vehicle—of course, I could not imagine actually parking there. On this one side of the street there was no occupancy for ten houses—all boarded up. And on this street—in this sweltering heat—mill ten adults of the nonwhite kind, each one drinking from a brown paper bag. And let me tell you, they were already fucked up and it was still afternoon!

I thought I’d never make it home, but I did. Jesus, what a town this is.