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vegetables,” he said. “I put everything on the back of the stove when you telephoned from the lobby,” said she. He spent the night and left at around nine. Elevator men, janitors, the whole service population play an important role of approval or shock in our extracurricular appearances, and the elevator man in Renée’s apartment seemed surprised and bewildered by Sears’s appearance. His look of bewilderment was followed by a look of solicitude as if Sears aroused in him some concern. He asked if he could get Sears a taxi. Sears thanked him and said no. Sears thought him already a member of the cast and wondered how the tip for Christmas was arranged in that particular building, although it was not yet Easter.
    Oh the wind and the rain! Back in Janice Maria Salazzo bought some wind chimes at Buy Brite when she had some extra money after Sam shot the dog.
    Betsy first heard the chimes one night in early spring when she was getting supper. Sam had hung them from the ceiling of the Salazzos’ back porch, which was very close to the Logans’ kitchen, and even when Betsy closed the window she could hear the music of the wind chimes. That night their music woke her. It was three in the morning and she couldn’t get back to sleep. The wind chimes seemed to speak to her although she wanted nothing to do with them.She blamed herself. She disliked the Salazzos because they had killed their dog and she disliked everything else about them including their wind chimes. It was her fault that she couldn’t get back to sleep until dawn and when the alarm woke her the next thing she heard was the music of the wind chimes.
    Betsy was working part time as a file clerk at the Scandinavian Lamp Factory, but when she came home from work and paid off the old lady who sat with Binxie she heard the wind chimes again. She closed the window. She still seemed to hear them and she went upstairs and closed all the windows on that side of the house. It was a warm evening for that time of year and when Henry came home and kissed her he asked why all the windows were shut. “The Salazzos’ wind chimes are driving me crazy,” Betsy said. “I may be neurotic or something but I hate the noise they make.” “I’ll turn up the TV so you can’t hear it,” said Henry, and he did, but when he turned off the TV and they went to bed at about eleven she could hear the wind chimes again, telling their dumb, continuous story in a language she could not understand. She imagined the Salazzos to be much less sensitive and refined than she and Henry and she guessed that their insensitivity involved an indifference to the sounds of the world around them, including the sounds of their wind chimes. However, they woke her again at three and kept her pretty much awake until dawn. She could not discern what she found so troubling in the noise they made but she thought they made a troublesome noise. When she came home the next night and was taking off her shoes she called her friend Liz Holland and told her about the problem.
    “Well, ask her to take them down,” Liz said. “Just tell her they’re driving you crazy. Or maybe first ask her politely if she can hear them and if the noise doesn’t bother her. Why don’t you try that?”
    At that time of year the Salazzos almost never came out of their house except to go to work. It was too cold for them to have filled their new stand-up swimming pool and there wasn’t any grass to cut. Betsy didn’t want to bring up the problem on the telephone but the next night when she was unwrapping some frozen vegetables she saw Maria Salazzo come down the back stairs with a garbage container. Betsy ran out of the house and crossed the yard. “Hasn’t it been a nice day?” she asked.
    “It depends on what you were doing,” said Maria. She banged the garbage container against the pail. Betsy had been told that she sometimes drank a lot. She hoped she wasn’t drunk. “I see you have new wind chimes,” said