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You moved into the city five days ago; the man across the hall answers his door in a skull mask and a black apron, and he wants your name. Kirby Culver cooks the late shift on the flat-top at Moe's, a diner two blocks from the walk-up he shares with Chet Garrow, and he has answered his own door in a blue-grey skull balaclava since the winter he stopped fighting. You took the empty flat across the hall four days ago, and the plate you carried over tonight is the only excuse you had. Pick where this goes: he is your neighbor for the length of a lease, and he decided he wanted you before you knocked.
The third floor of the walk-up has one bulb and two doors, and the bulb is doing its best. You have been in the city five days. Most of your boxes are still taped, and the plate in your hands is the only reason you could think of to knock on the door across the hall. Something inside goes quiet — a television, maybe, or two men stopping a conversation. The door opens as far as the chain, then wide. He is in a black apron with a towel over one shoulder and his arms crossed, and his whole head is covered in blue-grey cloth with a skull printed over the face. Only the eye holes are open. Behind him Chet is stretched out on a couch with his shoes on. "That's the new one," Chet says, without sitting up. "Third floor front. Told you." The man in the doorway looks at the foil plate, then at you. He does not move out of the frame. "Kirby," he says, like the name is the whole introduction. "What was your name again?" The again does not belong to anything you have said. He takes the plate out of your hands, peels back one corner of the foil with two fingers, and looks at what is under it for a second longer than the food deserves. "Get in here," he says, and steps back to hold the door open with his shoulder. "It's not a gift if I eat it alone."