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friendlier. Willy had told her later he’d thought the guy was an asshole. She’d merely looked at him sadly. In his mind’s eye, he could again feel the warmth of her shoulders through the fabric of his shirt.
    He tossed the picture onto the tabletop and got up. So far, he hadn’t found any sign of her being involved with another man.
    He went to the small bathroom beside the kitchen. There was a shower curtain running around the inside of an old claw-foot tub, a pedestal sink facing a wall cabinet with a mirrored door, and a toilet. It was all ancient and battered, but built to withstand the average artillery assault—heavy porcelain, cast iron, a tile floor. What Mary had been able to make clean, she had. The rest was either chipped, cracked, or stained beyond the help of minor surgery. It was standard New York fare, and made him think back to his own bathroom as a boy, or at least the one he’d shared with the rest of the family. He’d hated that bathroom—the constant interruptions when he’d hoped to be alone, the presence of so many other people’s personal items, from Kotex pads in the pail by the toilet, to mangled toothbrushes and mysterious smears of whoknew-what around the sink. And his mother used to leave her underwear hanging off the shower nozzle overnight, after washing it in the sink. Drove him nuts.
    Not Mary, though. Here, nothing was out of place. That had driven him nuts, too.
    He opened the cabinet door: aspirin, brush, comb, a headband to hold back her hair, cotton balls in a dish, a variety of lotions and creams, toothbrush and paste, a backup bar of soap, still in its wrapper.
    And a birth control dispenser, its dated slots empty up to the day she died.
    He held the plastic clamshell in his hand, reading the prescription on its cover. These were sometimes taken medicinally, he thought, not just for practical purposes. Other times, they were merely wishful thinking in pill form, and didn’t actually indicate any active sexuality. Given the lack of romantic evidence elsewhere in the apartment, Willy was left to wonder.
    Finally, ignoring the stench, he returned to the living room and tried imagining the life it had once contained. Here, books were read, conversations held on the phone by the couch, the TV was watched. Sometimes, the walls were studied during daydreams or in thought—or in despair. Frugality spoke for itself. Everything was threadbare, worn, or cheaply made. But there was pride as well. The place was clean, the colorful accents he’d noticed earlier had been strategically placed to either please the eye or cover a defect, or both.
    He approached the pine-board-and-brick bookshelves next to the window and studied their contents. Romantic novels, a few standard reference works, carefully piledup fashion and travel magazines. Gaps between volumes were filled with plastic figurines or a cheerful piece of inexpensive pottery. He recognized an odd-looking rock she’d collected when they’d been walking together near the river back in Brattleboro, and which he’d told her was a stupid thing to lug around. There were other familiar odds and ends he saw from their time together.
    A few pictures stood among the books, either framed and free-standing on a pop-out cardboard leg or simply propped up and slightly curling. He recognized the mother who would have nothing to do with her—a hardbitten woman with cold, judgmental eyes. There was a sunset photograph of some Vermont mountain, probably Jay Peak. And a group shot of Mary surrounded by five others, all laughing at the camera, their arms interlaced. Willy brought this last off the shelf and held it under the light, studying the faces before him, his eyes lingering over Mary’s. She looked absolutely, totally happy. In the background was a sign mounted against a gritty, urban brick wall, which he assumed belonged in this city. It read, “The Re-Coop.” There was nothing written on the back of the photograph, but tucked into