Wilson sits down on the stoop of the town house behind him, where he has a view of their building across the street. There are wreaths hanging from the wrought-iron rungs of the door, and garlands have been wound around the poles of the canopy. Wilson can’t remember if the decorations were there this morning, or if they appeared in the few hours he has been at work. For all he knows, they have been up for a week, and it unnerves him to be unsure; he likes to think of himself as an observant person.

A taxi pulls up in front of the building, and a doorman—a new one, and strikingly young-looking—emerges from inside to open the cab door. A woman gets out curbside and heads directly for the door; the doorman hurries to open it for her and to take her bags. Then a man gets out on the street side of the cab, and he closes the edge of his long scarf in the door as he slams it shut. Wilson sits upright, wondering if the man notices that his scarf is caught; he seems not to as he begins to walk away from the cab, the scarf slipping from his shoulders and finally dangling from the door to the ground. Wilson stands, ready to alert the man that he has left his scarf behind, and he is about to step into the street and call out when he sees the lobby doors open again and Ruth and Isabelle come out. He bites his lip, glancing from his wife and daughter to the cab, which is pulling away, dragging the scarf behind it.

He looks again at Ruth and Isabelle, and then he crouches behind a parked car so that he can see without being seen. Ruth has paused outside the lobby doors; she is introducing herself to this new doorman, who has taken off his hat in a show of old-fashioned manners. His hair lifts in the wind; Wilson half expects him to bow. Isabelle waits for her mother by one of the canopy poles, swinging herself around it in a way that surprises Wilson; if it were last year, he thinks, he would probably chastise her out of concern for the garlands; now, he would never interrupt this show of playfulness.