Ron told me to text him once I arrived at the Subway station near his house in the Bronx. He had already sent me his address, so I didn’t bother. I started walking, following Google Maps.

It was early evening and still bright out. The after-work crowd streamed in and out of grocery stores. I’d never been to the Bronx, so I stopped to look around. I was immediately in somebody’s way and told to move, so I kept walking towards Ron’s apartment.

I turned off a busy a street and up a quieter road. Groups of people lounged on the porches of their buildings talking to neighbors and friends. Outside a shop, men sat at a fold-up table smoking cigarettes. They stared at me as I passed. I waved hello and they smiled and waved back.

When Google Maps told me I was at Ron’s building I texted him. He came downstairs with a look of disbelief.

“I told you to call, Irish,” he said, looking past me and down both sides of the street.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I told him.

He laughed and shook his head and we went inside. Inside the lobby of Ron’s building there was a rusty shopping cart lying on its side next to a broken washing machine. The walls had graffiti on them. A mix of warm smells – dinners being cooked – filled the air.

Ron lived on the top floor. We passed some of his neighbours on the stairs and he greeted them. When they saw me they waved hello, snorting laughter at me as if I was a dog walking on my hind legs.

Ron had no furniture in his apartment. We sat on plastic boxes, the kind you see filled with fruit in grocery stores. His lights didn’t work, so the fading daylight streaming through an open window made do. Soon, the blue glow of an old TV in the corner of his living room was the only light.

Ron went into his kitchen and came back carrying a bottle of alcohol and what looked like a tin of paint. He poured me a glass of pineapple cognac from the bottle. Then he took a penknife from his pocket and stabbed the tin of paint. I could see cartoon yellow rings of pineapple on the side of the tin. Ron tipped the tin into my glass. Yellow syrupy juice poured from the hole he had made with his knife, as he topped up my pineapple cognac with pineapple juice.

Ron must have had a dozen cats in his apartment. He kept his front door open and random cats came and went like a breeze. I hate cats. These ones were mellow though. They were probably as stoned as we were from the thick smoke filling the room.

I remember thinking to myself, “This is a mad auld buzz,” as I sat on a plastic box in Ron’s apartment in the Bronx drinking pineapple cognac and passing him joints. It wasn’t though. We were just two people hanging out. At the time I wanted to be like Anthony Bourdain, thinking I was in an episode of “Parts Unknown,” which is ridiculous. It was a fun night though.

When it was time for me to go, Ron insisted on walking me to the subway. Armed police men and large black vans with flashing lights lined the sidewalk near the station. I remember telling Ron that something must have happened. He just laughed quietly to himself.

In 2016 I lived in New York City for the summer and worked in a café on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, opposite the gates to Central Park on 5th Avenue. The café had outdoor seats and blue umbrellas. It was wedged between a grey church and the ultra-modern Guggenheim museum. Because of the prime location, it was a very busy spot.

We served a lot of tourists with cameras around their necks, or sweaty early morning joggers and cyclists in lycra shorts. Most customers were rich locals wearing expensive clothes. A lot of them had very Instagramable purebred dogs, like English Sheepdogs, or French Bulldogs that panted heavily in the summer humidity.

Sometimes celebrities and models would come in. I didn’t always recognize them, but they walked, sat and ordered with a certain air that told me they must be important, and I should know that. When their macadamia nut flat whites would arrive, they’d pose for photos holding the coffees to their pouted lips.

One time I served Geraldo Rivera. This excited my manager Vinnie. “Dude, that’s Geraldo Rivera!” he told me, his eyes bulging in the direction of Rivera. I followed his gaze towards an old-ish man in sailing shoes with foamed milk all over his curly white moustache. I had no idea who Geraldo Rivera was. He sort of looked like an upbeat Joseph Fritzl. Later that night, thanks to YouTube, I found out he was one of America’s most famous news anchors. Who gives a fuck? Vinnie.

My favourite part about working in the café was Ron. He was a black kitchen porter in his 50s from the Bronx with faded tattoos all over his forearms. One of the tattoos said “Ron Ron.” Whenever he smiled, two gold teeth glistened in his mouth.

All day Ron washed cups, plates and pots in a small steel sink next to the café’s hissing and squealing coffee machine. He was highly irritable and often cursed us servers for adding another pile of dirty dishes to his workload, calling us “punk ass motherfuckers.” He always called me, “Irish.” I liked him immediately.

Ron also sold weed. Every day after work I’d buy two grams off him and head for Central Park. One day he came with me. We sat on rocks beside the lake, passing a spliff back and forth. He told me he had spent fifteen years in prison for armed robbery. He said prison was good for him, because it calmed him down and he reckons he must have read well over a thousand books. His favourite was Robinson Crusoe.

When the spliff was smoked, and before we went our separate ways, Ron invited me to his apartment in the Bronx on the weekend. He said we could hang out, listen to some of the old school New York hip-hop I hadn’t heard of, smoke weed and drink pineapple cognac. I told him I’d love to do that, then tried to hand over the money I owed him for weed. He refused and we parted.

I took the subway back to Brooklyn, stoned and listening to my headphones, as the train rattled through the tunnels under the city.