I must have fallen asleep for a while, because suddenly it was dark and Mister Cat’s girlfriend, the Siamese Hussy, had started calling from across the street. Mister Cat yawned and stretched and was over at the window, giving me that look: It’s my job, what can I tell you? I opened the window and he vanished, nothing left but his warm-toast smell on my blouse. There were a couple of dogs barking, but it didn’t worry me. Mister Cat never has to bother about dogs, not in New York, not in Dorset. It’s the way he looks at them, it’s magic. If I knew how to look at people like that, I’d be fine.

I was thinking Sally might come in—she does sometimes after we’ve had a fight. But she was on the phone in her bedroom. I couldn’t make out any words, but I knew she’d be talking to Evan half the night, same as practically every night, buzzing and giggling and cooing just like all the damn Tiffanys and Courtneys in the halls, in all the stairwells, with their Jasons and their Joshuas and their Seans. So I flopped back in bed, and started thinking hard about what I’d say to Norris tomorrow, to keep my mind off what Sally and Evan were probably saying about me right now. And I suddenly thought how Norris used to sing me a bedtime song, a long, long time ago. The way we did, he’d sing one line and I’d have to sing the same line right after him, and each time faster, until the two of us were just cracking up, falling all over each other, yelling this gibberish, until Sally’d have to come in to see what was going on. I was still trying to remember how the song actually went when I fell asleep.

Two

Mister Cat wasn’t back when I got up. Sally was already up and dressed and running, because Wednesdays she had to be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by eight to teach a class in accompaniment, and after that she had four voice students and a part-time job playing rehearsal piano for some friend’s dance company.