For a change everybody wanted to buy me a drink. I told her I’d take a rain check, left her shop just in time to miss a bus on West End Avenue, and walked the sixteen blocks downtown to my apartment. It was a nice crisp fall afternoon and I figured I could use the walk. You don’t get all that much fresh air and exercise in a bookstore.

There was mail in my box. I carried it upstairs and put it in the wastebasket. I was half-undressed when the phone rang. It was a woman I know who runs a day-care center in Chelsea, and the parent of one of her charges had just given her two tickets to the ballet, and wasn’t that terrific? I agreed that it was but explained I couldn’t make it. “I’m bushed,” I said. “I’ve ordered myself to go to bed without supper. I was just about to take the phone off the hook when it rang.”

“Well, drink some coffee instead. What’s-his-name’s dancing. You know, the Russian.”

“They’re all Russians. I’d fall asleep in the middle. Sorry.”

She wished me pleasant dreams and broke the connection. I left the phone off the hook. I’d have enjoyed eating Carolyn’s beef stew and I’d also have enjoyed watching the Russian hop around the stage, and I didn’t want the phone to let me know what else I was missing. It made an eerie sound for a while, then fell into a sullen silence. I finished undressing and turned off the lights and got into bed, and I lay there on my back with my arms at my sides and my eyes closed, breathing slowly and rhythmically and letting my mind go here and there. I either dreamed or daydreamed, and I was in some sort of doze when the alarm went off at nine o’clock. I got up, took a quick shower and shave, put on some clean clothes, and made myself a nice cup of tea. At a quarter after nine I put the phone back on the hook. At precisely nine-twenty it rang.

I picked it up and said hello. My caller said, “There’s been no change.”