I took the subway downtown. The train was one of the new ones, its interior a pleasing pattern of yellow and orange and tan. The inscribers of graffiti had already scarred it badly, scrawling their indecipherable messages over every available space.

I didn’t notice anyone smoking.

I got off at West Fourth and walked south and west to Morton Street, where Fran Schecter had a small apartment on the top floor of a four-story brownstone. I rang her bell, announced myself over the intercom, and was buzzed through the vestibule door.

The stairwell was full of smells—baking smells on the first floor, cat odor halfway up, and the unmistakable scent of marijuana at the top. I thought that you could draw a building’s profile from the aromas in its stairwell.

Fran was waiting for me in her doorway. Short curly hair, light brown in color, framed a round baby face. She had a button nose, a pouty mouth, and cheeks a chipmunk would have been proud of.

She said, “Hi, I’m Fran. And you’re Matt. Can I call you Matt?” I assured her that she could, and her hand settled on my arm as she steered me inside.

The marijuana reek was much stronger inside. The apartment was a studio. One fairly large room with a pullman kitchen on one wall. The furniture consisted of a canvas sling chair, a pillow sofa, some plastic milk crates assembled as shelves for books and clothes, and a large waterbed covered with a fake-fur spread. A framed poster on one wall over the waterbed showed a room interior, with a railway locomotive emerging from the fireplace.

I turned down a drink, accepted a can of diet soda. I sat with it on the pillow sofa, which turned out to be more comfortable than it looked. She took the sling chair, which must have been more comfortable than it looked.

“Chance said you’re investigating what happened to Kim,” she said. “He said to tell you whatever you want to know.”

There was a breathless little-girl quality to her voice and I couldn’t tell how much of it was deliberate. I asked her what she knew about Kim.

“Not much. I met her a few times. Sometimes Chance’ll take two girls at once out to dinner or a show. I guess I met everyone at one time or another. I just met Donna once, she’s on her own trip, it’s like she’s lost in space. Have you met Donna?” I shook my head. “I like Sunny. I don’t know if we’re friends exactly, but she’s the only one I’d call up to talk to. I’ll call her once, twice a week, or she’ll call me, you know, and we’ll talk.”

“But you never called Kim?”