“I don’t think so. Not yet, at least. If she’ll come to the hospital I’ll make sure she’s examined and gets her vitamins and things.”

She kissed him and waited eagerly for Janet’s next visit, but the girl did not come back. Six days later, trudging up the hill with a bag of groceries, she saw Ralphie coming the other way.

“Hi, there. How’s Janet?” she asked.

His eyes were glazed. “What, the kid?” he said. “Her family’s taking care of her.” He walked off, marching to a different drum.

Two days later she saw Carl delivering posters and asked again about the girl.

“She’s not living with us anymore.”

“Where is she?”

“I think Milwaukee.”

“Milwaukee?” Gaby said faintly.

“This cat she met came and took her away.”

“Do you have her address?”

“I’ve got it written down somewhere back at the house.”

“Could you give it to me sometime? I’d like to write to her.”

“Sure. I’ll do that.”

But he never did.

She missed the coffee visits. Mrs. Walters would have been glad to come in and sit and gossip if asked, she felt certain, but she didn’t like the landlady and avoided her. She became fascinated by another inhabitant of the building, a small bent woman who scuttled forth under her shawl every few days and always came back carrying a single paper bag. Her face was pinched up tight as if against a hostile world. The poor thing looked like a hung-over witch, Gaby thought, and knew instantly who it was.

One morning she opened the door and moved to intercept her. “Mrs. Krol,” she said.

Bertha Krol trembled as Gaby’s hand touched her elbow.

“I’m your neighbor. Gabrielle Pender. Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea with me?”

The frightened eyes searched Phillips Street like birds seeking escape from a cage. “No,” she whispered.

Gaby let her go.

It rained a lot, a wet spring. The nausea caused by the pills disappeared. The earth shifted and the days became longer and less cold; the rain fell every few days and the run-off rushed down the hill’s cobblestoned gutters and made little waterfalls into the old sewers and drains. At the hospital Adam assisted at a series of thoracic cases and was affected by open heart surgery as if it were LSD. At night when they lay in bed and talked softly in the dark he told her of placing his hand into the chest incision and feeling through the thin rubber of the gloves the throbbing of the twisting pink pump, the living heart.

“What was it like?” she asked him.

“Like touching you.”