She dressed quickly, went back to the bedroom to look for Megan. The blonde girl was sleeping soundly. In the kitchen she found a pad and pencil. She wrote: My love, I’m off to work. Meet me for lunch, if you can. Or meet me after work and help me move in with you. She paused, chewed on the end of the pencil, then added: I feel so wonderful, so very wonderful. I can’t believe it. I did not think I would ever be this gloriously happy. See what you’ve done to me? You’ve got me running off at the mouth. Not at the mouth, I guess, because I’m writing this, not saying it. Running off at the pencil? Oh, I’m silly. I ought to tear up this silly note and start over. I love you, I truly do.

She was outside on the street before she realized that she did not know where she was. Megan had told her what street they were on, but she was bubbling with wine at the time and the street name had not sunk in. She memorized Megan’s house number, then walked to the nearest corner. Megan lived on Cornelia Sheet, she saw and she was now at the corner of Cornelia and Bleecker, which meant that she was only four or five blocks from her own room. She had probably walked past Megan’s building a dozen times, never dreaming she would know a girl who lived inside.

Not so strange, she realized. The Village was not so very large, and she had walked down all its streets at one time or another. Now she headed over to Seventh Avenue, found a diner and had a quick breakfast, smoked several cigarettes and drank three cups of black coffee. She had had hardly any sleep at all during the night, and yet she was somehow not at all tired. She paid her check and hurried off to work.

The shop was as she had left it, the work itself the same as always. And yet everything was entirely different this morning and she knew it, could feel it in the air and in herself. Her step was quicker and lighter, her voice firmer and easier when she spoke. People seemed different-more human, even. They were the same hurrying tourists with the same lack of taste as always, and she knew this, but she found herself relating to them in a different fashion.