I mentioned to one person that I was moving apartments. Six men arrived on Saturday. I had not asked. I had mentioned. In this country mentioning is asking, and asking is answered, and the answer arrives at eight in the morning with a truck. I did not know two of them. One of them, I am now certain, was a friend of a friend who had simply heard that there would be lifting. They carried my life down three flights of stairs. They argued about the couch. They solved the couch. A man named Kev took the heaviest box without discussion, because he was the largest, and because in every country on earth the largest man takes the heaviest box and pretends it weighs nothing. I tried to pay them. This was, I now understand, the most offensive thing I have done in America. They laughed at me. Not cruelly. The way you laugh at a dog that has proudly brought you a stick you did not throw. I asked what was owed. They said pizza. Pizza. I had raised an army of six men and moved an entire household, and the levy for this was pizza. I bought eleven of them. It was far too many. I could not stop. It was the only lever I had. We sat on the floor of an empty apartment and ate off boxes, and Kev fell asleep sitting upright, and no one woke him. I want to say this plainly, with no decoration. Back home, to ask six men for a Saturday, you must have standing. You must have earned it across years, and even then you would hesitate to spend it. Here you need a truck and one friend who talks. They did not come because I was important. They came because it was Saturday, and I needed help, and they were free. That is a more powerful country than mine, and I say so without shame. I have given up four Saturdays since then. I do not know these people well. I go anyway. I have become a man who hears the word "moving" and reaches for his shoes.