He was standing at the edge of the roof and heard a sound in back of him, he turned. It was the landlord watching him.

"Oh, Mister Fried..."

Mr. Fried took off his hat and puffed on his cigar. The roof had been tarred and the landlord, amid askew TV antennas from different periods and probably thinking of litigation, was having another look at it. He put his hat back on his head and looked at him with his good memory.

"They still haven’t showed up, have they?"

Steve shook his head. The rent was being paid but obviously not by him.

"No sir," he said deferentially.

Mr. Fried’s military moustache twitched. It was a slapdash job of roof maintenance and he scuffed with the side of his shoe sole at a bituminous length of ladder-lead. He took his cigar from between his canines and examined the tip. Then he cracked a sardonic smile.

"Maybe they’ve gone back in their mother."

"That’s a good one, Mister Fried."

Mr. Fried lived in New Jersey.

The two men turned and looked out over the limberlost of Riverside Park.

The yellow light could be seen blinking up on the West Side Highway. Maybe there was road work even though it was Sunday.

In the park again, walking swiftly. Jogging was for show, identity. It was an act just like anorexia was an act.

What he found was an incident of road rage. The guy, driving too fast, wanted to turn off the West Side Highway just as the other driver sideswiped him hard and the car had flipped over. It was lying balanced on its top with the yellow turning light still blinking. The guy had simply crawled out and walked away from it.

He put his weight against the car and it rocked a little like an egg. The dashboard compartment had flung open and road maps were scattered all over the interior. There were a lot of them, and they were grimy. He pulled one out. Long Island – Westchester County. The guy’s hat was in there too, black straw with a narrow snap-brim just like Mr. Fried’s. A management hat. He knelt in and fished it out. He jammed it down on his head. It was a half-size too small. He was still as large as a family-size sedan. Maybe if he lost more weight…

But he mustn’t lose more weight. Of course there was still some food left in the kitchen cupboard. A couple of health food items, a jar of those Japanese pickled apricots, a box of wheat germ, and a small can of Pet condensed milk. It should be possible to make a meal. A boy dog and a girl dog get together on the ends of their leashes. It’s beside the health foods store and the two dogs, noses to genitals, make a wiggling waggling yin-yang symbol. But their masters are busy and start to move on. Something makes the two dogs growl at each other, and then on parting they each give a short and private whine. See you in dog heaven.

He had a lucid dream about getting food and money. Wearing his new hat he walked to Broadway where Mary Queen of Chance—please, my lily of the windowsill—might smile on him and he could shop, the Yentas sitting on the benches on the island and vigilant feebs by the subway entrance. Who should he run into but Drayton Simpson. She invites him up to her place. Her apartment is on E. 86th. Living with her is her fiancé who is breaking up with her. After all, she is only a surrogate spouse. They are making dinner preparations for a get-together with her parents. She has Steve taste the hors d’oeuvre, which is delectable, and says that he is welcome to dine with them. The only problem is that they forgot to buy potatoes. So she asks him if he won’t go and buy a couple of pounds at the nearby Dominican grocery store. She gives him five dollars and he goes down with the elevator. As he is walking in search of the Dominican grocery, he realizes that he neglected to memorize her address and it is unlikely that he can find her building again. It’s possible, however, that he has her phone number in a pocket somewhere. There is also the problem of finding a phone that works. He finds one on the corner of Broadway and 92nd, but this was the anomaly which broke the dream, when he realizes that the phone booth doesn’t exist and that it is the mockup phone booth on the corner used in Rosemary’s Baby. He woke up.

He lay and thought of Nadia Abovo in her city clothes, ballerina’s mufti, Burberry, the dark plait, eye make-up, the disposition of her thighs as she stands in a phone booth talking in the rain, blue legs and Capezios. He thought of Drayton Simpson. He could picture Drayton going on talking and talking. If an action of his would interrupt her talk, her gait, her cogwheel conversation, then she would break off for a while and time would stop for her, or it would go on, and she would try to pick it up again. She would try all kinds of things to pick it up again. Things that may or may not work. But she has a time mesh there with conversation and thought, and she could be up all night, talking, talking to a blank wall. She could go down into that cellar store on McDougal Street that the two of them looked at that time like they were going to buy it, and there might be a couple of people nodding on the floor, and the walls blank and damp and a gas heater burning along the other wall and a light bulb burning. And Drayton would be standing there talking and gesticulating and putting her hands in her pockets and turning around. He was hungry and he didn’t have any more than a couple of dollars in change, and when it came to the point he didn’t have a roof over his head. He was no longer able to sustain life.