Two years after I left Davey Levinson sitting in the restaurant on East Broadway I interviewed Joe Durbin for a story I was writing on a rent strike. He was a labour organiser on the left, and a throwback to the romantic figures of my earliest life. The union movement was Joe’s passion. He had been an official in the CIO, known every labour leader from John L. Lewis to Walter Reuther, and had organised all over the historical map: California in the thirties, Michigan in the forties, New York in the fifties. He was twenty years older than me, and he was married. The age difference gave me my control. A week after the interview he called to suggest dinner. We were together six years.