If an Amazon shipment comes in for Nico, Bob lets him walk right past, and only as he turns the corner for the elevator does he call out: “Berengo? 8D? Package for you.” The thought that a man who doesn’t acknowledge his presence actually knows his name is deeply upsetting to Berengo. “It’s humiliating. Everything I buy—a new pair of pants, a jacket, comics, posters, PlayStation games—all of it has to pass through those hands. I feel ashamed every time.”

Berengo is convinced that all the concierges and porters and doormen are acting out of hostility, that they’re talking about him behind his back and discussing his reactions, that of the hundreds of Americans and foreigners that live in this skyscraper near Times Square, they find him to be the most amusing, the most worthy of their mockery. “Their hostility is a weapon,” says Berengo. “It’s an instrument of class warfare.”