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painted white, highlighting their fine details against the planks of glistening oak. His kitchen was a self-contained unit of handleless black Formica cabinets above a shimmering row of stainless-steel appliances. His large bathroom was outfitted with an elaborate marble sink, its faucet handles saying hot and cold in delicate blue letters. His bathtub could fit two and he had the luxury of a separate shower stall. Otherwise, the space was open. Wide open: eyes could look upward, past the gay yellow sprinkler pipes to a fourteen-foot ceiling: and then scan, when standing at one end, across the twenty-five hundred square feet to a set of windows at the other end. Even his furniture (though there wasn’t nearly enough to fill the place) was fine. Two large Oriental rugs floated on the floor like exquisite lily pads; two huge couches made an angle bordering one of the rugs; there was a long French country table near the kitchen exit, accompanied by a set of Breuer chairs; and, at another end of the loft, a king-size bed rested against one wall. In this cavern, it looked like a big pillow.
    The effect of this splendor on Patty was increased by the deceptive prelude of the building’s seedy entrance. Three of the floors were still used for industrial purposes and thus the elevator was a dark, unfinished shell, roofless and spooky. It didn’t even operate automatically. David started it up by manipulating two cables, and the loud whirring noise of the elevator’s engine sounded labored. It lurched at the start. “Whoa,” Patty said, startled, and staggered backward, balancing herself against the rear wall.
    David smiled. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. That’s the way it always sounds.”
    Thus she was dazzled when David swung open the tall metal doors of the dim and scary elevator (she imagined rats and spiders and all sorts of horrible things lurking about) into the sweeping, brilliant loft.
    Touring it made conversation natural. David had inherited the loft from his older brother, who had been a SoHo pioneer. David called him that with a sneer. “At the time, everybody thought he was crazy. There wasn’t a name for this area and this place was a filthy mess, the ceilings sagging, the oak floor a dirty, unrecognizable brown.” David’s brother had gotten a lot of work when SoHo conversions became fashionable. He made enough money to realize his dream: he moved to a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.
    “Maybe one day I’ll be that lucky,” David said as they settled on one of the couches. He had supplied her with wine and reheated a cup of that morning’s coffee in a desperate attempt to sober himself up. When Patty leaned forward to replace her glass on the coffee table after taking a sip, the pink cotton top billowed away from her breasts like a sail picking up a gentle breeze, and he saw (in astonishing detail) the firm creamy white terrain that had so discombobulated Fred. A green-blue vein ran vertically across her right breast, winding like a stream down a mountain’s face, disappearing into the chasm of her cleavage. On her left breast, a startling brown beauty mark was frozen in orbit about her nipple. All this he saw in the time it took for her to reach forward. Her big eyes rolled like a doll’s, down and then up as she straightened. He saw her see that he was seeing. He felt his face flush. His pale cheeks were all that his dark glasses and brown beard exposed, but they were enough— they turned red. His blushing wasn’t unusual. David liked to think of himself as a sophisticate, but nature had given him the cheeks of a bride. Years ago, he had made peace with them by training himself to talk through their flare-ups. “It’s a beautiful place,” he said loudly, noticing that she was smiling and staring at the display. “But I feel like I’m part of a warehouse sale. Or a parked car. It’s too big.” He paused, hoping she wouldn’t call attention to his embarrassment.
    For a moment,