Lilly hated it, of course. After all, she couldn’t very well commandeer the john in an apartment filled with strangers expecting a certain basic level of hospitality. Not that she didn’t try, but early on there was an unfortunate incident when someone literally burst down the door, ruining several of Lilly’s prints in the bargain. After that, she became scarce, either staying out somewhere or barricading herself in her room.

Thursdays really took off when I started handing out invitations to interesting types I happened to meet: a man sitting with his pet monkey in Union Square; a casting agent; a woman singing opera in front of the Washington Square fountain; a philosopher in red robes standing beside a hotel taxi stand and extolling the virtues of simple living. After I elevated the group beer kitty to a mandatory door donation, I realized that my weekly soirees had more potential than anything else I was doing.

By that December, anyone who saw Lilly and me in that apartment would have taken us for a pair of deaf-mutes, considering how thoroughly we weren’t speaking to each other. By this point I had asked her to move out innumerable times in my mind, but I wasn’t sure who Lilly knew in the city other than myself. I wasn’t at all sure where she would go, if and when I did build up the wherewithal to say the words out loud. At the same time, I was already considering the musicians I could start inviting once her room became available, and how quickly a slightly larger door donation would cover her half of the rent.

Lower East Side, 1954–56

19. Window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, New York, 1954

No one in this picture knows they’re being watched: not the dreamy-eyed woman gazing at the smart mannequins, or the smiling man eyeing the dreamy-eyed woman. Lillian wasn’t big on themes. She said she took pictures of whatever grabbed her, but around this time there sure are a lot of watched women filling up her contact sheets. The way Deb describes it, Lillian would have had a pretty good reason for that.

DEBORAH BRODSKY: There I am, coming down the stairs, and coming up is a gigantic box with legs. Then the box reaches the landing, and this prim-looking thing steps out from behind it, and that’s Lilly. This is February 1954, East Sixth Street—stained walls, cracked tiles, the smells of frying fat and boiled cabbage—and here’s this clean-cut girl in a pale blouse with little gold earrings in her little pale ears, looking like she belongs on a nice suburban lawn somewhere. I ask is she lost. She says she’s my new neighbor in a voice that reminds me of glass animals. I think to myself: this kid hasn’t got a chance.