The old man was coming up steadily now, at least three times a day, and I had resigned myself to it. If I refused to let him in he would always come back later with a missing bulb on the fifth floor. We had taken to buying cases of beer together, and when he had finished his half, which was very frequently, he would come up to polish off mine. I began to enjoy talking about politics, the AMA, Medicare, and hippies, and listening to him recite from books he had read. I discovered that he was very well read in history, philosophy, literature and law. He was extraordinarily fond of saying: “I am really a cut above being a building superintendent. Circumstances made me what I am.” And even though he was drunk and dirty and it was very late at night, I believed him and liked him anyway because having him there was much better than being alone. After he had gone I could sleep and I was not lonely in sleep; and it did not really matter how late I was at work the next morning, because when I really thought about it all, I discovered that nothing really matters except not being old and being alive and having potential to dream about, and not being alone.

Whenever I passed his wife on the steps she would say: “That no-good bastard let them take my dog away.” And whenever her husband complained that he was sick she said: “That’s good for him. He took my dog away.”

Sullivan slept in the basement on the sofa almost every night because his wife would think about the dog after the Carson Show and blame him for letting it be taken away. He told her, and then me, that the dog was on a farm in New Hampshire; but that was unlikely because the dog had been near mad, and it did not appease her. It was nearing autumn and she was getting violent. Her screams could be heard for hours through the halls and I knew that beyond her quiet door Miss O’Hara was plotting again. Sullivan now had little cuts and bruises on his face and hands, and one day he said: “Meg is like an albatross around my neck. I wish she was dead. I’m sick myself and I can’t take much more. She blames me for the dog and I couldn’t help it.”

“Why don’t you take her out to see the dog?” I said.

“I couldn’t help it, Rob,” he went on. “I’m old and I couldn’t help it.”

“You ought to just get her out of here for a while.”

He looked at me, drunk as usual. “Where would we go? We can’t even get past the Square.”

There was nothing left to say.

“Honest to God, I couldn’t help it,” he said. He was not saying it to me.