LUCY AND SIMON SAT BACK A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLY AS THEIR TAXI LEFT the blossom trees and shopping precinct behind for a change of landscape. Simon regretted the extra pancake he’d taken for breakfast as the vehicle lurched and bumped, with impossibly soft suspension, all the way from their boutique midtown hotel to the bottom of Jane Street, at the Hudson River end. They spilled out onto the corner of Jane and West streets, at the fringe of Greenwich Village.

Lucy’s expectations were surprised when the building they were looking for turned out to be a vast, unprepossessing brick warehouse that had once serviced the now disused docks along the Hudson. She pushed a buzzer apprehensively on a battered metal service door beside a corrugated iron trucking entrance. A disembodied voice said, “Hi,” and when she gave her name, it resumed in the same breezy tone: “Glad you could come! As you enter the building, walk to the elevator in the middle work area, then take the cage to the top floor. I’ll send it down, and meet you at the top.”

She looked at Simon with wide eyes, and his own twinkled humorously back at her. After a “click” he pushed the door, and in front of them, dimly lit by a dozen bare lightbulbs suspended on bare wires, was an empty space as large as a football field. A strange smell of disused building and damp paper, blended with the tidal river, greeted them. As the voice had promised, an open-plan cargo elevator shaft stood in the center of the abandoned working area. Its twenties-style rusting iron frame disappeared into a hole in the floor, far above them, and the pair walked timidly across the empty space toward it as the cage hummed downward from the ceiling.

“Do you think this thing is safe?” Lucy questioned Simon as it crashed onto the ground level and literally threw the iron gate wide. He made no reply, but stepped into its vast metal interior and pulled her gently in behind him, smiling quietly. “You’ve been here before, you beast! You might have told me.” Lucy laughed.

“Wait until you see the pad,” Simon said, as he closed the door carefully. “Views in three directions. The one across the river is unreal. Will and I went to some wild parties here on our way through, between assignments. Roland used to put us up, sometimes—when he felt like company. He’s a very different kind of person.”