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Perhaps I should have emphasized that earlier. All those steps from the entrance on Bleecker Street to the door to our apartment. Laurie paused on each landing to catch her breath. This could have been before she relapsed for a fourth time or after. The stairwell was always empty, until one day when it filled with the sweet smell of flesh, more pungent than the ripest cheese. It was so powerful that I would clothespin my nose between my two fingers and take the stairs by twos, and still I could smell the odor through my mouth. The woman in apartment 2D stayed in bed for at least aweek, and then it was the smell that aroused suspicion, not her disappearance. She was old, and evidently no one noticed her absence.
    The living go on remembering; that’s our job, to the extent we can bear our own scrutiny. My nightly conversations with Laurie were the chorus of a song, the same thing, night after night as we sat playing chess or watching TV. We talked about my complicated love life. I couldn’t tell her that Lance had finally made a move and I’d done nothing. We talked about Bradley and his bimbo, and I wondered whether she knew they were engaged. We talked about my terrible job. We talked about whether we should get a summer share. We argued about politics.
    I told her I was moving out one morning as she stood in front of the mirror getting ready for work. The red wig fell to the middle of her back, curling at the tips. It was impractical, she said all the time, too long. She should get it cut. She was beautiful, though, whether she was wearing the wig or a scarf.
    On the table, the Styrofoam head eyed me suspiciously.
    “When do you want to move?” she asked.
    “Not immediately,” I said. “In a month or two.”
    The list was still on the refrigerator, though there was nothing written under either of our names. I saw her expression change in the mirror. Her mouth opened, closed, then she smiled and laughed.
    She said, “Okay,” or that’s what I try to remember, along with the talking Styrofoam head, the kissing list, the silly arguments, her expert opening moves, all the bottles of Diet Cokeand fingernail polish, the lilt in her voice, the waiter calling out across the street to her: “Nice legs.” This and everything else are what I try to think about, not the night several months later when she ripped the IV tubes from her arm and descended by elevator into the hospital basement where she wandered alone, leaving a trail of red dots for someone to follow.
    “Will you come and stay with me?” she asked when she called me the next day. “I’m afraid I’ll do it again.”
    That night, we lay side by side in beds as uncomfortable as the couch in our old apartment. It was impossible to sleep with the IV machine chirping out reminders to the nurses to change the bags of drugs, the drugs that were supposed to make her better, but which instead were making her want to go down into the basement. I still don’t understand how they could have let her wander freely in the hospital. I don’t recall what we talked about that night. I just remember that morning when I told her I was moving out. The red wig was pulled back into a ponytail, and Laurie smiled and said, “Okay,” and I repeated, “Okay, okay, okay.”

H e said, Marry me, and she said, No, I couldn’t marry someone who isn’t willing to eat vegetables or soft cheese. Camembert means more to you than me? He looked like he had just swallowed some by mistake, a big triangular wedge of it stuck in his throat.
    He had vegetable and soft-cheese phobias. It was so annoying! They’d only raised a toast in a French restaurant once. She buried her face in the zucchini-green couch that she’d helped him pick out. She’d helped him buy almost everythingin his classic six. She’d even persuaded him that stoneware was important, and now he owned various bowls and plates of various sizes for various foods, most of which would never touch his lips.
    Goldy, he said,