"High school, Jeanette.”

"I don't blame you not remembering. Boy, the time.”

"I think I may remember now.”

"You work here, right? Everybody works here.”

"I'm supposed to be on the down.”

"You're still remembering? Jeanette, who hung around with Theresa and Geri.”

"I remembered just then.”

"That was how many years, right?”

"They won't let me on.”

"But don't you love this place? You should see how I have to get to the cafeteria. A local and an express down. Then an express up. Then the escalator if you can get there without them ripping your flesh to pieces.”

"Torn asunder, I know.”

"You work for the state, being here?”

"I'm in the wrong tower.”

Pammy and Lyle didn't go out much anymore. They used to spend a lot of time discovering restaurants. They traveled to the palest limits of the city, eating in little river warrens near the open approaches to bridges or in family restaurants out in the boroughs, the neutral decor of such places and their remoteness serving as tokens of authenticity. They went to clubs where new talent auditioned and comic troupes improvised. On spring weekends they bought plants at greenhouses in the suburbs and went to boatyards on City Island or the North Shore to help friends get their modest yachts seaworthy. Gradually their range diminished. Even movies, double features in the chandeliered urinals of upper Broadway, no longer tempted them. What seemed missing was the desire to compile.

They had sandwiches for dinner, envelopes of soup, or went around the corner to a coffee shop, eating quickly while a man mopped the floor near their table, growling like a jazz bassist. There was a Chinese place three blocks away. This was as far as they traveled, most evenings and weekends, for nonutili-tarian purposes. Pammy was skilled at distinguishing among the waiters here. A source of quiet pride.

Lyle passed time watching television.