He had gone across the room now, and he was on the bed, squatting on it, hugging his knees. It tightened everything in the room. I had the only chair. The bed was mounted on four bricks. A piece of Indian madras covered it. The chair in which I sat was drawn up in front of a large office desk. The desk was pushed against the wall. The cord of an electric heater lay on the floor under a wall socket. It was not plugged in.

The big room was washed with light. The skylight admitted the day. It would admit, on summer evenings, the moon, too.

“Aren’t there any windows to the street?” I said.

He hugged his knees. “Oh, I know what’s down there,” he said.

I looked again at the skylight. The view went on and on. Vertically.

“Do you know what’s up there, too?”

“Sure. A dead dog.”

I was faintly startled.

“A dog?”

“In the first sputnik. He’s bones now. A dog’s bones: that’s what’s up there.”

“Who was the girl?”

“Where?”

“On the floor below. With that terrible scar on her forehead.”

“My landlady.”

“How did she get the scar? An auto?”

“No. A trumpet player. He threw her across a room.”

“Oh?”

“One of the best Negro horn players in the country.”

“That should make her feel better.”

“He just got mean when he was juiced. Afterwards, he cried.”

“Don’t we all.”

There was a pause. Perhaps it was the light: gray and sourceless. It dislocated me. I said, finally: “It must be nice, waking up under that skylight.”

He smiled. The smile was faint and lopsided. He tightened the embrace about his knees. I had the impression he was trying to fold himself up and, if he could, disappear into a smaller box. Chin down, he began to talk of how each day he awakened.

To light. Heaven’s own. Was the pillow damp? He came out of sleep as from some encounter. What had he fought? Mano a mano. The room contained certain objects: he was one of them.

Now he moved. I was to envision him moving. On that bed. The knee had a hinge, the arm a socket, one was, after all, manipulable. Every morning he made the same discovery. He was the product of some mysterious piece of engineering. Undoubtedly. Go do a piss, you jerk.

His days (the eyes were focused not on me, not even on the folded knees) were purposeful. Yes sir. No son of a bitch was going to say he wasn’t organized. Take, for example, with what certitude he came down the four flights of stairs to the brownstone’s vestibule. With what confidence he applied his hand to the knob of the front door. With what character he avoided looking into the mailbox. A man can get hung up on that mailbox jazz. Now, intact, his own man, organized, his fly zippered like any other solid citizen, he issued out into the street.

Waking up was a real piece of cake.