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this time the guy beneath the blanket didn’t show his face, though the smell of urine started wafting up the stairwell. When the tenants met now, they scrunched their noses in distaste and hurried into their apartments as quickly as possible, disgusted and afraid.
    Finally, Mrs. Bondarchuk, the one who had called the police, clutched Anne’s arm outside her door and drew her into the kitchen. “You’ve got to do something.”
    “Me? What about the super? Or the cops?”
    Mrs. Bondarchuk shot her a scornful look. “You don’t think they have other things to do?”
    “Sure, but what am I supposed to do?”
    Mrs. Bondarchuk was a tiny Ukrainian lady, barely five feet tall, but her wrinkled face was powerfully insistent. Her short hair was dyed a lurid, unconvincing red. Until recently, she had refused to acknowledge Anne’s presence, but her new friendliness came at a price. “You go talk to them,” she said firmly. “You’re a young person.” The logic of this was self-evident to her. “
You
go talk.”
    “All right,” Anne said. “Fine.”
    She went downstairs and stood next to the pile without any idea what sort of creature was hidden beneath it. “Excuse me,” she finally said.
    There was neither answer nor movement in the pile, and the smell was rank. It had been four days.
    “I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here. You have to leave.”
    No answer. Was he asleep? Passed out on drugs?
    “I know it’s cold out,” she said. “But there are places, right? I mean, shelters. They’ll feed you, and give you a shower and stuff. You have options.”
    As she said it, she remembered someone speaking those last three words to her,
You have options
, when she was very young, and the way a voice had risen up inside her, silent but stubborn, that said,
No, I don’t
.
    The pile, however, said nothing. Defeated, she turned on her heel and went back to her apartment.
    What put the situation over the edge was the shit. She left for rehearsal and when she came back, three hours later, a few pages of the
New York Times
Arts section were neatly folded into quarters in the opposite corner of the entryway. The smell was unmistakable.
    “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Are you kidding me?”
    Taking a deep breath and holding it, she grabbed one edge of the wool blanket and pulled. Whoever was underneath—both underneath and inside and twisted around, it seemed—pulled back, and for a minute it was like a tug of war. Anne wanted to give up, because holding this filthy blanket was grossing her out, but then the other person gave in and she reeled backward, almost stumbling flat on her ass, and when the blanket dropped from her hand, she saw to her shock that it was a girl. Blond, teenage, stocky, her round cheeks constellated with pimples.
    “I need some food,” the girl said, then burrowed into the green army coat and pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arm around them. It was as if she were anchoring herself to the floor, folding herself into a packet as neat and small as the newspaper. She smelled like mold and garbage, like something discarded and left to rot.
    “I’m hungry,” the girl insisted. Then, as if reading Anne’s mind, she added, “And I stink. Can I use your shower? I feel kind of disgusting.”
    She was so matter-of-fact, so unapologetic, that Anne was speechless. She had been picturing a man, older, maybe a vet, somewhat or completely out of his mind, homeless for a long time. A teenage runaway—a girl who could shit in a building and then curl up asleep next to it—had never occurred to her.
    “If I bring you upstairs and let you shower,” she said, “will you go to one of the shelters? I’ll help you get there.”
    The girl gazed at her, the expression in her eyes impossible to read. “I’m starving,” she said.
    “I have some food,” Anne said. “Okay?”
    The girl struggled heavily to her feet, gathering her coat around her. She looked sleepy, and willing, if not happy,