On tiptoes she slid open the top drawer and began flicking through files, her Mozart swelling behind her.

Pam tapped her door with a knuckle, warning it she would return, and crossed the room to the filing cabinet. The confusion was common it arose from the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of the ground floor-a busy bookshop and a swing-doored optician obscured the sign that told you of the dentist, the insurers, the accountant and Pam’s own dinky realty business at the top of the building also the antique elevator that would take you to them. Miss Martha Penk, who appeared to believe that two bedrooms and a garden could be had for a thousand dollars a month, would figure out her second mistake soon enough, come back, discover the bell. The cold was just too extreme today the first snows were due, opening performance of a show that would last a dreary, relentless four months. Pam went to her own door, opened it, worried her chapped lips with a finger, closed it again. Pam opened her mouth to call out ‘Miss Penk!’ but never got to make the curious sound-abruptly the girl turned the corner and headed back down Apple towards the river. She had on a red overcoat and cream snow boots, putting her weight on their edges like an ice skater she seemed to waver between two doorways. From her tiny office on the third floor, Pam Roberts looked through a window and correctly identified the Martha Penk she was waiting for, a shrimpish girl pushing twenty-two, lost down there. Though the telephone is a perfectly useless indicator of most human qualities, it’s pretty precise about age.

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