“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.”

“Tomorrow I’ll get some liniment and rub you,” she said.

“Mmmm. Good night, Gaby.”

“Good night, darling Adam.”

Upstairs, the woman howled. Outside, another can clattered on the icy pavement. Next to him she shivered slightly and he turned and put his arm around her shoulders.

In a little while he could feel her shaking under his arm much the same way as the landlady had shaken but was unable to tell whether in sorrow or mirth.

“What’s the matter?” he asked gently.

“I’m so tired. And I keep thinking ‘So this is what it’s like to be a fallen woman.’”

He laughed with her, although it hurt in a number of places.