Travel along Cedar Avenue, all the way to the corner of where Dickinson Street meets West Main, and you’ll find him without glut or deception, dressed in a grey pin-striped Italian suit that had seen too many days in the rain.

The first time I saw him I was thirty-three. I had not taken well to the responsibility that decade commanded, spending the first two years mostly in a sitting position with my right palm never without a bottle of Rolling Rock. The bar I patronized daily was one block over from my home at the South Hill housing complex, a sad and depressing residence filled with ex-cons, ex-offenders and ex-addicts. To get to the bar I had to cross Dickinson Street, and consequently the path of the vagabond I knew only as The Key Man. Back then he wore a soiled fedora, wide brim with an emaciated eagle feather poking out from the side. His shoes were Spats, like those the children wore in Bugsey Malone. They were cracked at the toe and smeared with what appeared to be vomit, or rotten food, who knows. He had aged like Leonard Cohen, and Bukowski; drained, yet full of spirit and appeal. Every time I saw him, I wished… no, I yearned that the drink ravage my face the very same.

The jingle jangle of tiny pieces of metal was the first thing you heard, followed by the deep rasp of cough. He addressed everyone the same, with the same regard and consideration. “Morning, friend,” he would say, his voice a broken exhaust pipe caught in the Jersey Tunnel. “A fine day, isn’t it?”

Most people he approached said nothing in return, ignoring him the best they could, while carrying coffee cups and talking into their tiny plastic phones. I thought myself different from most people, but I did share this vulgar display of aloofness, if only to quell being buttonholed by a man who smelt worse than a tipping ground during a heat wave. In most cases, acting mute never made a damn bit of difference anyways because the Key Man would spend the first fifty yards or so walking beside you, a slight limp to his right foot. “Would sir be interested in a key?” He’d side step a puddle, jump over a bead of gum, tiptoe around dog shit. In his hand was the Fedora, respectfully dropped to reveal its threadbare and faded interior. In his other hand, a pirate’s earring covered in tiny brown and silver keys. “Would sir be interested in a key to open the heart of a pretty lady, perhaps? Maybe a key to unlock the secrets of the universe? I have a key that can bring fortune and prosperity.” And like everyone else, I said nothing.

Those who sat with me in the bar, and who were referred to only by nickname and misnomers, said that the Key Man had left the Merchant Navy in 1956, and spent his first five years on shore in Liverpool. One night while walking along the Albert Docks, he broke up a fight and took a beating for a young man with a sharp tongue and long nose. As way of thanks, the young man gave him his first key. He told him that every key has a lock, and the purpose of a lock is to protect. The key had now found its home. Nineteen years later, someone shot that man dead outside his apartment in New York.

Rain or shine, sleet or snow, the Key Man offered us everything we wanted, and everyone ignored him.

I’d lost nearly eight years of my thirties, and most of my liver, when I met a girl called Delilah Fortune in the bar. For a woman with a propitious surname she was always broke and ill-fated in almost every task she undertook. She was also nothing special to look at too. In fact, she was quite hideous in the harsh light of day, but she had a way about her. It’s hard to describe, but her low-class deportment and trashy dresses made me feel a lot better about myself. We married in spring under a malting cherry blossom. One of the residents of South Hill had, at one time, been a priest, but had been caught with his finger somewhere it shouldn’t have been. He took care of the legalities involved, and Jack Daniels made sure the rest of the day was spent blissfully blind to the understanding I was now married to an ugly woman.

Surname and a common liking for drink united both Delilah and I, but that was all. We were companions at best, and not very good one’s at that. I sensed a downward turn in our relationship soon after discovering three condoms floating in the toilet of the apartment we shared. From what I could recall, we never used contraception because her womb was barren as the Saudi desert. The second and more obvious clue came when I returned home to find the walls decorated with human faeces, most of it spelling out the word, “Bastard!” After our marriage ended, some three months after it began, I found out from a mutual boozehound that Delilah’s willingness to wear my ring came not from love, or even fascination. For years, every letter addressed to her bore the same designation: Ms. Fortune. She married me for no other reason than to change her luck. After she discovered I had fuck-all to give, she left me.

The following day after Delilah moved out of my flat, I hit Dickinson and stopped in front of the Key Man. I was on my way to see a man about a job cutting wood for rich people who lived in houses only ten years old, but had period fireplaces that gave the place “charm”. I remember there was a slight drizzle in the air, fine enough to soak you in minutes. He was sitting in the door of an old dispensary, a blanket reddened by blood, or possibly rust, covering his legs. His hat was gone, so too were his shoes. Most probably stolen, or sold. “Morning, friend,” he said, the words as tired and jaded as his jacket. “Nice day, isn’t it?” I asked if he was the famous Key Man, the man they say could change people’s lives. “Would sir be interested in a key?” I agreed, and took out my last ten dollars. “Would sir be interested in a key that can open the door to a different time? Or maybe a key that could make him immortal?” I asked him of all the keys he owns, did he have one that could change a person’s luck. He nodded enthusiastically and began fingering the rusted ring of keys shivering in his hand. “I have the very key here, sir. I won’t be a minute.” A few seconds later, his fingers prized away from the loop a shit-brown piece of metal, jagged and scratched. He held it out. “This is the key you want. This key will change your life, all for the better.” He was pathetic, and sad. I couldn’t help but admire him. I asked him how much, and he said only a dollar fifty. I gave him ten, knowing he wouldn’t have change. “Would you have anything smaller?” I shook my head. “I could do it for a dollar, in change?” I shook my head and pulled out my pockets. “You can see why I need that key, right?”

He spent the next few moments looking at that ten-dollar note. It was probably the most money he’d seen in months, maybe years. When the rain began to gather strength, he handed it back, and said, “No charge today, sir. You change your luck, and when it does, you come back and pay me.” I agreed and left him soaking in the rain.

I never got the job. When my welfare cheque came in, I went back to see the Key Man to pay him his dollar fifty. But as I got to the end of Dickinson, the jingle jangle of keys didn’t meet me, nor did his usual welcome. All the stoops and recesses were empty. Even the doorway to the old dispensary had been cleared out. Back at the bar, I asked the guys if anyone had seen him. It was a man they called John The Baptist who told me the news. John had been walking back home late the previous night. As he passed West Main, he had seen the Key Man stripped down to his pants, shouting all kinds of crazy shit at people walking by. He’d stopped for a while to watch. John said the Key Man’s behaviour had all the hallmarks of a person going through hypothermia. As the body freezes, the brain sends out messages that make the person think they’re burning up. Most people who die from hypothermia are found naked, or so John informed me. I asked John if no one had the common decency to throw him a jacket, and John said no one had the time. The key Man began howling, and running up and down the street, swinging the loop of keys around his head. The same time a Mack truck ran a red light, the Key Man jumped into the road. He was sent forty feet in the air. John said the sound of the keys landing on the road took over a minute and reminded him of wind chimes caught in a gale. When the ambulance came and took away the body, everyone on the sidewalk bent down and took a key. Everyone. When he said that, John took from his pocket a shiny gold key, and asked me, “What do you think this one will unlock?”

I couldn’t be arsed to answer him.