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for a week. The room had one large window with a panoramic view of stubby, toylike buildings and a soiled ribbon of East River. Ray was lying on his back, tubes emerging from his arms. He looked white and shrunken, but the operation had been a success. "Sit down, sit down," he said. "Do you want some candy or something?" I shook my head. "There's some lemonade— Minute Maid—if you want."
    "So, how are you feeling?" I said.
    "Okay."
    I sat in a chair by the window. "Nice flowers," I said.
    His mother swept into the room. She was wearing an expensive-looking outfit in baby pink: trousers, a linen jacket, sling-back pink high heels with rosettes, strands of pink and gray pearls. I studied my feet, realizing too late I should have stood up. Mrs. Connors came over to my chair, bent to embrace me, and pecked me on both cheeks. "Just look at you two," she said. "What a couple of deadbeats. Cora, where have you been? Ray was frantic when you left New Haven. Now, I don't want to interfere; you just tell me to shut up. I don't know what's been going on with you two. But why do you have to live together? Why don't you just get married?"
    "Ma," Ray said from his bed.
    I smiled. "Those earrings are wonderful," I said. Mrs. Connors was wearing large mulberry-colored cubes, spiked with gold branches like tendrils. They resembled some living entities found in a coral reef.
    "Look how she tries to change the subject, Ray," Mrs. Connors said. She put her hand up to her ears. "These old things," she said. "They're not real." She undipped them and handed them to me.
    "Nice," I said, studying them, iney re tor you.
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    "Oh, no, I couldn't."
    "No, no, they're for you. I insist, don't make a fuss, or I'll be very angry."
    "Well, thank you," I said. I stood up, with the earrings in my hand. "I guess I'd better go now," I said. "I have to catch my train."
    "Where are you going?" Mrs. Connors said. "Back to Southampton? Don't go. You'll stay uptown with us—you can have Ray's room."
    "I didn't bring anything with me," I said.
    "Oh, we have everything," Mrs. Connors said. "We'll go out right now and buy a toothbrush. Ray talks nonstop about you, and I've hardly gotten a chance to see you."
    "I really can't stay," I said. I went over to the side of Ray's bed and bent to kiss him goodbye.
    "You'll call me later?" Ray said.
    He pulled me down by the arm. I thought he was going to whisper something to me, but when he didn't I said, "I'm glad the operation was a success."
    I made my mother answer the phone, but Ray didn't call. In the fall I found a job working for a publishing company in Manhattan and began the rounds of looking for a place to live. On Monday morning there was an ad for a studio apartment on a block near Central Park West. I had already checked out that block—mostly brownstones—and the blocks nearby; it was a nice area. The apartment was dark, but the building was quaint and I could almost afford it. I left a small deposit with the landlady. The woman was going to call my references and I was to leave my security deposit and first month's rent with her that afternoon.
    I had the rest of the morning to fill. For some reason I decided to go back downtown to the area where I saw the apartment with my mother the previous summer. I still felt as if that were really my apartment. Maybe by chance the previous tenants had moved out and there would once again be a for rent sign in the window. For less money than I would be paying on
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    the uptown place, I could have had a whole floor in a building, sunny, with a yard. As I got near the address I felt the strong feeling—the sense of place, whatever—coming back even more intensely than on the previous visit.
    Standing in the front entrance of the building was Ray.
    "Hi," he said.
    "Ray," I said. "What are you doing here?"
    "My father bought the first floor," he said.
    "I don't believe this," I said. "I tried to rent this place last year. I came back to look."
    "The building went co-op