“The Worst Neighbor Ever”

Ed Fitzgerald remembers the first time he worried about the new neighbor, when he first got a glimpse of what was to come.

The man next door, Gil Kerley, had bought the building, an old eyeglasses factory in the Nob Hill neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, some months prior. One night, Ed saw someone sleeping in the doorway of the building. It was peak COVID times, and the building was under renovation, and the homelessness issue was not unknown to the people of Albuquerque, so Ed thought it would be neighborly to let Gil know.