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his overcoat, in a special pocket designed to accommodate it, in case of untoward incidents.
    One time I said to Mr Pawlowsky that you could say of the building’s residents that we were motley, by which I meant from all walks of life, but he said politely that he himself might choose another word, given the chance: “‘Motley’ having the intimation of incongruous, or mismatched,” he noted, “whereas I would say that we are utterly normal in our variety; such is the American way, that everyone is welcome, generally, if civil and reasonably behaved and able to foot their bills, or have them footed by someone else. The one thing we really miss here, I think, is children; we have only the three, and one of those a teenager, who doesn’t count as a child, but as the larval stage of the uneasy adult, especially in his case; he is an uncomfortable young man, although Edward is of the opinion that he will end well, and Edward is usually right about such things.” This was a boy named Ovious, who despite his orotund name was amazingly thin, and who conducted himself in public with a series of sighs and grunts, the former for his parents and the latter for everyone else; supposedly he attended the technical high school nearby, apprenticing to be an electrician, but since he used the back alley for his peregrinations I hardly saw him; even when I did spot him, furtively slipping through the alley, he seemed obscure around the edges, as if he wasn’t fully formed yet, or had not been completely transported to this world from another one, where people were incredibly thin and didn’t speak much.

 
    5.
    THE FIRST TIME I set foot in Miss Elminides’ apartment was that month—she had been on a sea-voyage, as she said, and I had been absorbed in grappling with the opening weeks of my job at the magazine downtown, where it seemed to me I was utterly useless to begin with, and then slowly grew slightly less useless by the week—and it was mid-November before I found myself in her bay apartment, accompanied by Mr Pawlowsky and Edward. The proximate event was a contretemps with keys; I had misplaced mine, Mr Pawlowsky was sure he had left the master keys with Miss Elminides, and Edward came along to convey his regards to Miss Elminides, whom he much admired.
    We did not knock, when we arrived at her door—it wasn’t necessary, Mr Pawlowsky said, she knows when visitors are imminent—and indeed just as we arrived the door swung open and we stepped into her apartment, which was flooded with light and seemed immense, though I learned later it was only slightly bigger than the other apartments. It was furnished with austere grace: lean wooden tables and chairs, a modest marble fireplace, and large arches through which I could see a small kitchen to one side and a sort of studio to the other, with tables stacked with books and papers, and a wall hung with maps and musical instruments, among which I thought I saw the gleam of a flügelhorn. There was no hint of a bedroom or necessary room, and given the dimensions of the building I couldn’t imagine where such spaces would be in Miss Elminides’ apartment; when I asked Edward about this later he had to confess that this had always been a puzzle to him as well, and that he had wondered if she slept in her studio, or in a daybed under her bay windows, or perhaps did not sleep at all; she certainly had the translucent complexion of someone who regularly bathed in moonlight.
    She was tall, but not gangly; slender, but not weightless like poor Ovious; and she seemed to be that wonderfully indeterminate age that some women achieve after thirty or so, anywhere between thirty and sixty. Her hair was black and long; her eyes and eyebrows and earrings were also black; and her voice was murmurous as she stepped forward to say hello. I cannot remember to this day what she wore, and it afterward proved that I never could remember what