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paper and put it into the plastic garbage bag. “Anyone” meant a trick, a John: Mrs. Rodriguez, her upstairs neighbor, presumably had a private practice which she conducted while her husband was at work. To date, happily, Julie had not encountered any of her customers. Today was July 7. Her final addition to the Glad trash bag was the window sign, Friend Julie. She braced the door open to let air in. Maybe the mold would crawl out under its own power. She took Scarlet Night into the back room.
    Suddenly, through the doorway came Mrs. Ryan and Fritzie. Mrs. Ryan gave a great high croon of pleasure that sent Fritzie into paroxysms of excitement. He yapped and leaped and unintentionally peed on the floor. In the hug between the two women, Mrs. Ryan’s straw hat got knocked askew with hairpins flying in all directions and the gray hair tumbling.
    “Everybody in the neighborhood’s been asking after you, people you wouldn’t believe knew you were here. Oh, dear. Look what Fritzie has done. His kidneys aren’t what they used to be. Poor boy, I know you didn’t mean it.”
    Julie got a paper towel. The unrepentant animal lathered her face with smelly kisses when she got down to his level.
    “See? Even Fritzie missed you. You were in Europe. Did you by any chance get to Ireland?”
    “Only Paris,” Julie said.
    “For all this time? Oh, I dare say there’s enough to see. There was a play about Paris once in a theater where I was usher. I saw it night after night, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. And it was about prostitutes. You wouldn’t think that would be so complicated, now would you?”
    Julie made a noise of agreement, stuffed the towel into the trash bag, and went to the bathroom at the back of the shop to wash her hands. She tried to open the small window there, but it was stuck tight.
    Mrs. Ryan followed her through the curtained partition into the back room. “You’ll need to air this place out. I could loan you a fan. When old Mrs. Driscoll, down the hall at the Willoughby, died, her son gave me her air conditioner. It’s saved my life.”
    “I’ll have to do something to get some air back here,” Julie said.
    “Will you be living here, dear?” Mrs. Ryan said hopefully.
    “No. My husband came back with me. He’ll be home for a while now.”
    “I was going to ask about him,” Mrs. Ryan said with ill-concealed regret. “He works at home, does he?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Julie, are you married to the fellow who writes in the New York Times?”
    “Uh-huh.” She had not advertised Jeff among her West Side friends. She looked around in time to catch that puckered shape Mrs. Ryan made of her mouth at something she did not altogether approve.
    “I knew a lovely man once who wrote a column for the Daily News, an Irish name. I was hoping it might be him.”
    Julie said, “Jeff used to be a legman for Tony Alexander.” It was a name well known to readers of the News.
    “Did he?” Grudging admiration. “There’s always something in that column worth reading.” Making her tour of the room to see what if anything was new among Julie’s possessions, Mrs. Ryan discovered the painting. Another of her high, crooning “ohs.” Somehow, Julie thought, Mrs. Ryan had become more Irish in the past month. “Isn’t that beautiful, whatever it is? They always tell you to make of it what you want. Did you bring it from Paris? It looks very Frenchie.”
    “It is,” Julie said.
    “Where are you going to hang it?”
    “I haven’t decided yet.”
    “It’d be very attractive on the wall in front with one of the spotlights perking it up.”
    “Yeah.” Just what it needed, perking up.
    Mrs. Ryan was looking at her carefully, making some calculation, Julie knew. “I suppose you have to go home and fix dinner for himself. Or do you have a cook?”
    Julie laughed. It had not taken Mary Ryan long to fantasize the life of someone married to a New York Times columnist. “I don’t have a cook, Mrs.