Kate hesitated between truth and politeness. "Sometimes."

"I'll go soon."

"It's all right."

Erika had slipped off her shabby loafers, and sat with her legs curled under her. Her slim body fitted into the awkward chair as though she had no bones. "You don't feel like talking, so we won't talk."

Kate's eyes filled. Damn! she thought. She turned her back on the other girl. "I think the coffee is done," she said.

"I take mine black." A smile crinkled Erika's face. "When I came to this country I put sugar in everything. Butter too. On my bread, an inch thick. It was funny." The smile vanished. "I was hungry so long, all the time I was growing up. Even my bones were hungry."

"Where was that?"

"In Austria. With my family until the Anschluss, then in a kind of a camp. Not Dachau or any of those, quite an ordinary camp. There were a lot of them. But the people who died in them were just as dead as the others. I was twelve." She caught Kate's surprised look. "Yes, I'm now twenty-nine. Quite old."

"Five years older than me."

"That was the first part of my life. Now I live next door to you—since yesterday. Five days a week I teach music in a high school, to children who prefer rock and roll. On Sundays I go riding, when I can afford to rent a horse."

She took the cup from Kate and sat drinking her coffee, slowly, as if she were thirsty. Kate was silent. Finished, Erika set the cup on the dresser and stood up. "Thank you, Kate Wood. You must come and see me. But not until you want to."

"It was nice having you."

"No, because you wanted to be alone. But sometimes," Erika said, slipping her feet into her shoes and picking up her coat, "it's better not to be so alone. Now I must see if the lady is home yet."

Her steps were light and quick on the stairs. Kate stood in the middle of the floor, listening, until she tapped on Mrs. Brownlee's door below.

An interesting girl. Think about her. Put off the thoughts that would unwind from the spool of memory, hour after bitter hour, before the black nothing was reached. A little frightening. As if she could look at you and guess everything you're trying to hide: the aloneness and the terror.

She unwrapped the bottle and stood it on the dresser, between a tarnished lipstick and her plastic comb, which still had a few blond hairs caught between its teeth. The glass winked in the overhead light. She hated it.

She wadded the paper and gummed tape into a tight ball and dropped them into the wastebasket, then smoothed the wrinkles out of the bedspread. Can't stand to have things messy, she thought, looking nervously around the room. I may be a bum but I'm not a slob, not yet.

She poured a little of the whiskey into a plastic tumbler and tasted it. It was warm and acrid. Wish I had an ice cube, she thought. She made herself swallow a little, fixing her mind on the warmth and relaxation that would follow.