She had opened the couch and made the bed and she was lying there in a blue nightgown reading a magazine and marking recipes that she liked.

“That’s a lousy light. You’ll ruin your eyes,” he said.

“Why don’t you shut it?”

He made the rounds of all three weak-bulbed lamps and stumbled on her shoes in the dark on the way back. He eased into bed beside her, stifling a groan because his muscles had already stiffened dreadfully, and he had just turned toward her when somewhere a woman screamed, a long and terrified sound followed by a thump somewhere outside their door.

“My God.”

He leaped out of bed. “What did you do with my bag?”

“In the closet.”

She ran and handed it to him and he stuck his bare feet into his shoes and his arms into his robe and raced outside. It was very cold and he couldn’t see a thing. From somewhere upstairs the woman screamed again. He climbed the front stairs that led into the upper regions of the building and as he entered the front hall, the door of Apartment One opened and a woman looked out.

“Yes?”

“We heard something. Do you know what it was?”

“I didn’t hear anything. Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Silverstone. We just moved in. Downstairs.”

“Oh, I’m so pleased to know you.” The door opened wider, revealing a short dumpy body, graying hair, a round flabby face with faint signs of hair on the upper lip. “I’m Mrs. Walters. The landlady. Your wife’s a lovely little woman.”

“Thank you,” he said as upstairs the woman screamed again.

“That,” he said.

“Oh, that’s only Bertha Krol,” the woman said.

“Oh. Bertha Krol.”

“Yes. Don’t let her bother you. She’ll stop in a little while.” She looked at him standing there in his shoes and bare ankles and high-water pajamas and old robe and carrying the bag and her shoulders began to shake.

“Good evening,” he said stiffly.

As he walked down the first set of front steps something hurtled downward and there was another thump as a bag of garbage split open in the middle of the street. Amazed, he observed now in the light of the street lamp the messy evidence of the first bag they had heard striking the ground a few minutes before. He looked up in time to see a head flick back into the window above.

“That’s terrible!” he called. “You stop that, Bertha Krol!”

Something whistled by his head and clattered on the stairs.

A beer can.

Inside, Gaby was sitting in the chair, frightened. “What was it?” she asked.

“Only Bertha Krol. The landlady says she’ll stop in a little while.”

He put the medicine bag back into the closet and shut the lights and threw off the robe and stepped out of the shoes and they reentered the bed.

“Adam?”

“What?”

“I’m exhausted,” she said in a small voice.

“So am I,” he said, relieved. “Stiff and sore, too.”