Day Two

April 1

WHEN I GOT UP ON THE ROOF THIS EVENING, IT SEEMED WORD WAS GETTING around the building, and quite a few more tenants were up there—to cheer, bang pots, or enjoy the sunset. One tenant was quite literally taking the air, pushing one of those inflatable pool couches with the cup holes across the rooftop into position. I was still memorizing all these people’s apartment numbers, names, and specifics. Normally I don’t care much for people, but after last night, I had started to feel a twinge of curiosity about them all. I brought Wilbur’s bible with me and flipped through it, trying to identify each person around me, while keeping it as unobtrusive as possible. But nobody was paying me any attention—most of the people up there had journals or laptops with them. When not paging through the bible, I kept it on the couch next to me, covered with a blanket. Today everyone brought up refreshments, too—a bottle of wine, six-pack, thermos, cookies, crackers, cheese. They seemed almost giddy with the rebellion of it, as if by screwing the landlord’s rules, they could also screw the pandemic.

The statistics today were ugly. New York State now has 83,712 cases of Covid and 1,941 deaths. The Times announced that New York is now the epicenter of the Covid-19 crisis in the United States. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is going about its business like nothing is happening. People are saying it’s a blue-state disease, even a New York disease—nothing for them to be concerned about. I don’t know why they think this won’t come for them, too. Cuomo’s out there on TV every night, talking his head off, unlike old Cheeto in Chief up in the White House, who keeps insisting it’s just going to go away, poof, like magic.

Eurovision arrived, all dappered up with a bow tie and plaid jacket, skinny pants, and monk-strap brogues. It was a chilly evening, but I was well fortified with a discreet thermos, this time filled with a cocktail called an Alabazam, which I had concocted from rummaging through Wilbur’s collection—cognac, triple sec, bitters, and Rose’s lime juice. God knows, I needed that drink. I had already spent hours that day up on the roof trying to get through to Vomitgreen Manor, and then hours more calling various agencies and health departments. I couldn’t get anybody who had any kind of answers for me. I keep hearing rumors of massive outbreaks at the nursing homes, but Cuomo isn’t releasing stats. If they even have any. I was desperate to anesthetize my panic, despite how much my dad would hate all this drinking. Not that he’ll ever know.

When seven o’clock arrived, we banged and shouted and whistled. All except Vinegar, who just kept on reading a book of poetry. While the sound rose to a crescendo, I had a sudden vision of the Wickersham brothers—I can still hear the name in my dad’s voice, reading to me when I was a kid—those Wickershams up in the sky, their hairy monkey faces squinting down at us as we tried to make enough noise to prove we existed. To avoid being boiled alive in beezle-nut oil.

After the noise died down, we went back to ignoring one another. Eurovision had his music on, softly. Hello Kitty tapped at her phone. Vinegar read. I drank.

“Excuse me,” said the tenant in 4D, shutting the hardcover book she had been reading and turning to Eurovision. “Would it be possible for those of us who come up to the roof for peace and quiet to be accommodated? Don’t you have earbuds?”

She worked, according to The Fernsby Bible, as a librarian at the Whitney. Married to a doctor. I had already had an interaction with her. The bible advised that she was the building’s biggest tipper—never less than twenty bucks a visit. I was so desperate for money that I did something terrible. She called me into her apartment to fix a plugged bathroom sink, and I scored a twenty. I then came back when she wasn’t there and took a rubber washer out of the kitchen faucet. That earned me another twenty. I knew my dad would be appalled, but without those two twenties, I literally would not have been able to buy food or snag that last case of toilet paper on Instacart.

“I’m sorry,” said Eurovision, “I was playing the music for everyone’s enjoyment.”

“Thank you, but to be frank, I’m not enjoying it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Fine.” He dug his hand in his pocket for earbuds.

“What I’m not enjoying,” announced Vinegar suddenly, “is that we’re all hiding in our bubbles up here. We’re all crouching on our little islands with our backs turned to one another. It’s not like we’re on the subway, and we can all get off and go back to our lives. We’re trapped here together for God knows how much longer. Maybe we should be getting to know each other.”

“I’d really prefer silence,” said Whitney, starting to sound exasperated.

“If you want silence, there’s plenty of it in your apartment,” said Vinegar. “Or out there—” she gestured to the empty streets. “Lots of silence there.”

At that, Whitney opened her book and pretended to read, her face flushed. But she didn’t leave.

A new visitor to the roof spoke up, the tenant I figured was the one identified in the bible as Monsieur Ramboz in 6A. I wasn’t positive, though, because I had no idea what the name meant, since he was not French and in no way like Rambo, being a shabby, lean, frail old man with white hair, who, according to the bible, was a card-carrying communist. “I agree, and I think we should be talking to each other,” he said in a reedy voice. “The world’s changed. It’s not going to return to how it was for at least a few months. And here we are fiddling with our phones like Nero while Rome burned.”

“I had no idea Nero had a smartphone,” said Florida.

“Aren’t you the funny one,” said Vinegar.

“If I might say something?” said the Lady with the Rings, rattling her hand. “As a gallery owner I’ve been listening to people talk most of my life—you wouldn’t believe the kind of hogwash you hear in an art gallery—and I’m done. I, too, would appreciate some peace and quiet on the rooftop.”

“Art gallery?” said Vinegar.

“Yes.” The Lady with the Rings squared her shoulders. “I’ve exhibited work by some of the most prominent Black conceptual artists in the country—including Alex Chimère.”

She said the name as if we’d all be terribly impressed, but I’d never heard of Alex Chimère and, looking at the blank faces around me, no one else had, either.

“I’m sorry you have to lower yourself to mix with us common people on the roof,” said Vinegar.

The Lady with the Rings adjusted the Hermés silk scarf swaddled around her neck, her fingers moving irritably, rings clicking. “You live up to your nickname, that’s all I’ll say.”

Vinegar gathered herself up, and I wondered what was going to happen. She wasn’t someone, it seemed to me, to let a comment like that slide. She cleared her throat, looking slowly around the roof, making eye contact with each of us in turn.

* * *

“I know what you all call me behind my back—Vinegar. Miss Thing in 4C started it, along with some rumors about my family that I will address shortly. But I want to say at the outset that it’s not what people call you that matters but what you answer to. I’ve been called outside my name since I landed on this planet in a hospital room. My mother says as a newborn I looked like a muskrat, ‘just shriveled and wrinkled and a bit mischievous, as if you’d been here before.’ My aunt holds her hands up in feigned apology and says, ‘You looked more like a bulldog, but you grew into your face. You’re pretty now. You’ve been pretty since you were at least ten, once you got the braces.’

“I attended an arts school here, where, after we read and performed Huck Finn, some of the kids used to call me Nigger Jen. Jennifer is my given name, rhymes a bit with Jim, a bit with vinegar, so 4C thinks she’s cute, like those kids at my school did. But listen, listen, the same process they use to make wine is the one they use to make vinegar. Beauty, class, sass, art—it’s all subjective. If I come off as ‘salty,’ it’s because I know how low people can go. And just like vinegar is the same as wine, you can think of salt as a stinging irritant, or you can think of it as seasoning, which many of you could use. Anyhow, the sassy, salty, sapphire Black woman is a tired, played-out stereotype, and 4C should know it. Everyone should know it, especially now, with the swell of the protests, with the activism to show Black lives not only matter but are rich and full and beautiful.

“My son, Robert, Robbie, named after my grandfather, who was a judge, the first Black one in Rockland County, has never stopped marching with the protesters, even after the governor banned assemblies. I worry for him every day—maybe that’s why my face looks scrunched up; worry has a way of aging you, even if Black don’t crack. I’m proud of him, despite my fears that he’ll catch the virus or worse. Police violence has touched my family far more than this Covid everyone is so worried about. Yes, I empathize with all the people who are losing loved ones and employment, even with 3C, whose fool son is always knocking on her door, first bumming her last crumbs off of her and then her settlement money, and I despise this fool president for his inaction, his sociopathic white supremacist, malignant narcissism. But I worry about my boy and his life and how people see him just as much. It’s as if I’m always waiting for the call or the knock on my door or the viral video that alerts me of his death by the hands of the state around his neck. I wonder if 3C—though she owes me fifty-seven dollars and seventeen cents, now three months overdue, even though I know she received her settlement money ages ago—relates as Latinx. Does she worry why her son’s stopped knocking?

“My daughter, Carlotta, is pregnant, which is why she never joins us up here. We’ve been extra careful, which is her nature. A germaphobe since middle school, when all those little overpoweringly scented hand-sanitizer keychains from Bath and Body Works became popular, she has a touch of OCD. Only eats from plastic utensils and paper plates, none of our silverware, uses her shirt or a paper towel to touch any doorknobs, doing everything she can to ruin the environment with her pathological wastefulness. When I was married, we sent her to a therapist for a while, but Carlotta asked to stop after a month or so because ‘She only ever wants to talk about you, Mother, and she wants me to do homework assignments like licking a toilet seat and seeing that I can live through it.’ I didn’t blame her for wanting to quit, and no therapist would suggest that kind of exposure therapy now, spreading Covid and who knows what to their clients. She’s six months along now, barely showing on her thin frame. That’s how all of us carry in my family, skinny with just a little soccer ball, like those fake pregnancies on TV, until month eight, when we pop. I get the feeling that Carlotta is especially happy, not just because of the baby coming—though how and where she’ll deliver Baby Girl under these conditions is another constant stressor for me—but because she has an excuse to wear gloves and masks, even around the house, and to anoint her whole body with hand sanitizer. That girl, sweet but ditzy, would probably drink iodine or rubbing alcohol if she could.

“Which brings me back to Miss Thing in 4C, who I know started the rumor that Carlotta got pregnant in a McDonald’s bathroom by some rogue called Benjamin I’ve seen standing around but never met. He wears his hair in shiny, natural curls and has what silly people call ‘good hair.’ He claims to be Dominican, but he just looks Black to me and probably sells drugs. (I say that not because he’s Dominican and looks Black—let’s be real clear about that—but because he’s always outside near some stoop or alleyway.) But back to 4C. Carlotta would never use a public bathroom, especially not in a McDonald’s, maybe a Starbucks out of desperation, and she’d certainly never have unprotected sex in one. They say you can’t ever really know what your kids are up to, but I know my baby, and the father is her boyfriend of six years, an equally sweet, driven man named—get this—Carl.

“Carl and Carlotta, a coincidence they think is so cute, so fateful, have been together since she was eighteen. They wanted to marry then, but I told her to wait until she finished her studies at CUNY. I didn’t want her to end up young and divorced like me, with one or even two babies. She dropped out in her second year to try to emulate my career in art, painting surrealist, absurdist pieces. But let’s face it: Some of her work is good, but she’ll never be able to support a family with it the way I have with mine and alimony checks. My work is the kind of art you have to look at from just the right angle, kind of like me. Unfortunately, Carlotta needs formal training and perhaps a bit more of my genetics and less of her father’s. I can only teach her so much.

“On the bright side, Carl has a good job as an essential worker, an EMT. We never get to see him anymore, and when he talks to Carlotta on the phone, he tells her the gravest stories, stories I don’t want to repeat because, unlike Miss Thing, I stay out of other people’s business.

“4C would do well to practice the same ethics. Before this lockdown, I’d seen all kinds of people coming in and out of her apartment at all hours of the day, despite the crackdown on visitors. She claims they’re essential workers, doing things around her apartment that the super won’t do—”

Here I felt eyes on me. I hadn’t even gotten a call from that woman. I was opening my mouth to protest when I understood what she was implying.

“—and I suppose that’s an accurate description. These so-called plumbers and painters never arrive with tools or supplies in their hands, and they leave empty-handed far after business hours, if you know what I mean, without a mark or a stain on them, unless you count hickies.

“If anyone is salty, then, it’s she, because the postman never rings twice for her; none of these men make a second appearance at her apartment. I’ve heard from a reliable source in the building that she envies my artistic career and my upstanding children. Maybe she’s barren. I don’t know what she does for a living, unless it’s sex work, and there’s no shame in that industry, but 4C spreads rumors like social diseases, STDs. She’s got a disease of the mouth herself, flapping those overlined lips of hers. I’d pity her if she weren’t so messy.”

Vinegar paused a moment, then raised her voice as if the absent 4C could hear her through the asphalt of the roof.

“Maybe I do pity you, 4C, in spite of it all. You could be beautiful, even with that giant mole (which you might consider plucking occasionally), if it weren’t for your personality, just as I know I’m a fine wine with a complex cork. Anyone or anything can be—except the president—even this ugly, tumultuous time, which has brought us together, if you look at it from the right angle. So, hello, everyone. My name is Jennifer, and that is the only name I answer to.”

* * *

At the end of this startling monologue, Vinegar—I simply couldn’t think of her as a “Jennifer” yet, much as I knew I should try—looked around once more as if summoning a challenge. No surprise her grandfather was a judge. I could just imagine him thundering the law from the bench, wielding his gavel—a person not to be trifled with.

Florida, to my surprise, hadn’t interrupted even when Vinegar mentioned her son or claimed she owed her money. She just sat there, hands folded, shawl drawn tight, her face even tighter with disdain. I noticed Vinegar’s eyes drift over my shoulder and turned to see a mural, freshly painted on the tarred wall of the hut where the staircase emerged onto the roof. It was so eye-catching I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before when I was making my phone calls. Vinegar must have painted it earlier in the day. The work consisted of portraits of three joyful Black children, with a lot of color and vigor in the brushstrokes. I’m no art critic, but I got the sense that it was good. Really good. Other people had noticed it now, too, and a few got up to take a closer look. Even the Lady with the Rings. I noticed Vinegar’s “signature”—her initials over a bottle of Heinz vinegar. Clearly, she didn’t mind the nickname that much.

“Those are my babies when they were young,” Vinegar said. “I figure there’s lots of space on the wall for everyone else, if you all want. I can put paints and brushes and spray cans in a box just inside the door, if I can trust you not to trash my supplies. Anyone can write a message or paint a picture or whatever.” She looked around. “This building’s beyond hope, but, at least while we’re stuck here, we can make it our own.”

Whitney had been studiously ignoring us this whole time, but she put down her book, got up, and came over to look more closely at the mural. I was startled at this sudden interest.

Whitney turned to Vinegar. “You know, I believe I’ve seen your work. Wasn’t it in a gallery on Avenue C last year? I can’t remember the name.”

“Yes, it was,” said Vinegar with immense satisfaction, folding her hands in her lap. “Galería Loisaida. ‘Ghost Portraits.’ I sold five pieces from that show.” She paused. “How did you see it?”

“I work at the Whitney,” Whitney said. “Museum librarian. I have a great interest in contemporary art. I used to work in appraisals.”

“Oh, I love the Whitney,” said Vinegar.

“It seems to me,” said the Lady with the Rings, “that the landlord should give you a rebate on your rent—for building improvements.”

Florida said stiffly, “Or fine her for vandalism.”

“Thank you, Jennifer, for adding a little color to our lives,” said Eurovision quickly, heading off a looming altercation. “I can’t understand how the landlord gets away with this wreck of a building.”

He glanced at me as he said this, which made me want to clobber him. I was starting to get the feeling I was not popular among the tenants. Well, as my father would curse when he was really angry at one of his tenants, “Îmi voi agăţa lenjeria să se usuce pe crucea mamei lui—I’ll hang my underwear to dry on his mother’s cross.”

“Why the title? ‘Ghost Portraits’?” Whitney asked.

“They’re people I knew who died. I imagined what their ghosts would look like and painted their portraits. I have this idea that haunts are just the memories, wishes, desires, and sorrows of a dead person, all knotted and tangled up, left behind after the purified soul departs. So that’s what I tried to capture.”

“Like old Abe, the man who died in 4C?” said the Lady with the Rings. “You should paint his ghost. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still hanging around.”

Merenguero’s Daughter gave a shudder. “This talk about ghosts is making me chilly.” She pulled her jacket tighter.

“I met a ghost once,” said Whitney.

“For real?” Eurovision asked.

* * *

“Absolutely for real. It was in May of 1990. I was at a library conference in San Antonio, staying at the Menger Hotel, a rather charming old place built in the late 1800s. It’s also located across the street from the Alamo, which now stands in a little botanical park, full of trees and shrubs, each with a little metal label bearing its name.

“A friend had driven up from Houston to see me, and he suggested that we go walk through the Alamo, he being a botanist and therefore interested in the plants. He also thought I might find the building interesting. He said he’d been there several times as a child and had found it ‘evocative.’ So we strolled through the garden, looking at plants, and then went inside.

“The present memorial is the single main church building, which is essentially no more than a gutted masonry shell. There’s nothing at all in the church proper: a stone floor and stone walls, bearing the marks of thousands of bullets; the stone looks chewed. There are a couple of smaller semi-open rooms at the front of the church, where the baptismal font and a small shrine used to be, originally separated from the main room by stone pillars and partial walls.

“Around the edges of the main room are a few museum display cases, holding such artifacts of the defenders as the Daughters of Texas have managed to scrape together—rather a pitiful collection, including spoons, buttons, and (scraping the bottom of the barrel, if you ask me) a diploma certifying that one of the defenders had graduated from law school (this, like a number of other artifacts, wasn’t present in the Alamo at the time of the battle, but was obtained later from the family of the man to whom it belonged).

“The walls are lined with perfectly horrible oil paintings, showing various of the defenders in assorted ‘heroic’ poses. I suspect them all of having been executed by the Daughters of Texas in a special arts-and-crafts class held for the purpose, though I admit that I might be maligning the D of T by this supposition. At any rate, as museums go, this one doesn’t.

“It is quiet, owing to the presence of the woman waving the ‘Silence, Please! This Is a Shrine!’ sign in the middle of the room, but is not otherwise either spooky or reverent in atmosphere. It’s just a big, empty room. My friend and I cruised slowly around the room, making sotto voce remarks about the paintings and looking at the artifacts.

“And then I walked into a ghost. He was near the front of the main room, about ten feet in from the wall, near the smaller room on the left (as you enter the church). I was very surprised by the encounter, since I hadn’t expected to meet a ghost, and if I had, he wasn’t what I would have expected.

“I saw nothing, experienced no chill or oppression or malaise. The air was slightly warmer where I stood, but not so much as to be really noticeable. The only really distinct feeling was one of . . . communication. Very distinct communication. I knew he was there—and he certainly knew I was.

“Have you ever met the eyes of a stranger and known at once this is someone you’d like? I had a strong urge to continue standing there, communicating (as it were, since there were no words exchanged then) with this man. Because it was—distinctly, strongly—a man.

“I rather naturally assumed that I was imagining this and turned to find my friend, to reestablish a sense of reality. He was about six feet away. Within a couple of feet of walking toward him, I lost contact with the ghost, couldn’t feel him anymore. It was like leaving someone at a bus stop.

“Without speaking to my friend, I returned to the spot where I had encountered the ghost. There he was. Again, he was quite conscious of me, too. ‘Oh, there you are!’ Except we didn’t yet exchange these words, or any words.

“I tried the experiment two or three more times—stepping away and coming back—with similar results. If I moved away, I couldn’t feel him; if I moved back, I could. By this time, my friend was growing understandably curious. He came over and whispered, meaning to be funny, ‘Is this what a librarian does?’ Since he evidently didn’t sense the ghost—he was standing approximately where I had been—I didn’t say anything about it. I merely smiled and went on outside with him, where we continued our botanical investigations.

“The whole occurrence struck me as so very odd, while at the same time feeling utterly normal, that I went back to the Alamo alone on each of the next two days. Same thing; he was there, in the same spot, and he knew me. Each time, I would just stand there, engaged in what I can only call mental communication. As soon as I left the spot—it was an area maybe two-to-three-feet square—I couldn’t sense him anymore.

“I did wonder who he was, of course. There are brass plates at intervals around the walls of the church, listing the vital statistics of all the Alamo defenders, and I’d strolled along looking at these, trying to see if any of them rang a bell, so to speak. None did.

“Now, I did mention the occurrence to a few of the librarians at the conference, all of whom were very interested. I don’t think any of them went to the Alamo themselves—if they did, they didn’t tell me—but more than one of them suggested that perhaps the ghost wanted me to tell his story, my being an archivist and all. I said dubiously that I didn’t think that’s what he wanted, but the next—and last—time I went to the Alamo, I did ask him, in so many words.

“I stood there and thought—consciously, in words: ‘What do you want? I can’t really do anything for you. All I can give you is the knowledge that I know you’re there; I care that you lived and I care that you died here.’

“And he said—not out loud, but I heard the words distinctly inside my head—he said, ‘That’s enough.’

“It was enough; that’s all he wanted. It was the only time he spoke. My visit to the Alamo was complete. This time, I took a slightly different path out to bypass a group of tourists in my way. Instead of leaving in a straight line to the door, I circled around the pillar dividing the main church from one of the smaller rooms. There was a small brass plate in the angle of the wall there, not visible from the main sanctuary.

“The plate said that the smaller room had been used as a powder magazine during the defense of the fort. During the last hours of the siege, when it became apparent that the fort would fall, one of the defenders had made an effort to blow up the magazine, in order to destroy the fort and take as many of the attackers as possible with it. However, the man had been shot and killed just outside the smaller room, before he could succeed in his mission—more or less on the spot where I met the ghost.

“So I don’t know for sure: He didn’t tell me his name, and I gained no clear idea of his appearance—just a general impression that he was fairly tall, since he spoke down to me, somehow. But for what it’s worth, the man who was killed trying to blow up the powder magazine was named Robert Evans. He was described as being ‘black-haired, blue-eyed, nearly six feet tall, and always merry.’ That last bit sounds like the man I met, all right, but there’s no telling. This description appears in a book titled Alamo Defenders, which I bought in the museum bookshop as a final parting gesture. I had never heard of Robert Evans or the powder magazine before.” She paused for a moment. “And that’s the whole story.”

* * *

“Huh. Is that a true story?” Eurovision asked, suspiciously. “I mean, everyone who tells a ghost story starts by saying it’s true, but I want to know if it’s really true.”

“It’s honest-to-God true,” said Whitney.

“Do you think he knew he was dead?” Vinegar asked. “Maybe he became a ghost because he didn’t know.”

Whitney said, “Exactly what I thought. He got shot, taken down so fast that he never had the chance to experience his own death. Then his body was gone in the explosion, so there was no burial and maybe not even a funeral. He got stuck there in that spot, dazed and wondering what was going on, cut off from life but unable to find his way to the next world. People say that ghosts stick around because they have unfinished business on earth, but I think a lot of them may be like him, confused about their status, so to speak.”

“I think it runs even deeper than that,” said the Lady with the Rings. “People are so frightened of death, or so attached to life, that sometimes when it happens, they can’t accept that they’ve died. They’re in denial. Especially if it’s sudden and there’s no funeral.”

“So you think ghosts attend their own funerals?” asked Eurovision, with a strained laugh.

“I would certainly attend my own funeral,” said Vinegar. “Just to see who didn’t show.”

“Maybe it’s important to see your body going into the ground,” said the Lady with the Rings, “or otherwise you won’t believe it.”

Florida frowned. “I wonder how many Mexican ghosts are lingering there, too. They were just trying to reclaim their stolen land. Why put energy into mourning the men like Robert Evans?”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Whitney, “but how harshly should we judge the dead?”

“Harshly,” said Hello Kitty. “Line ’em up against the wall and shoot ’em.”

Vinegar frowned. “We have a right to judge the dead.”

“Don’t you think there’s some worth in just having lived?” said the Lady with the Rings. “We’re all going to be judged in the end, but at least we had the dignity of having existed.”

I couldn’t take much more of this kind of conversation. I had been trying so hard to stop worrying about my dad, whose dignity and even existence was being denied by the silence of Snotgreen Manor. That’s how it felt, anyway.

A chorus of sirens made it impossible to speak for a few moments. There must have been half a dozen ambulances tearing up the Bowery. I wondered what mass infection had occurred—maybe they were coming from some other nursing home packed with the dying.

By the time the noise of the sirens died away, the talk of the dead seemed to have drawn a curtain over the evening. Church bells intruded on the silence, and I figured they must be from St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street. We all sensed that the conversation, and our gathering, was done, and with some unconscious signal we all began packing up to go downstairs.

I was glad for the stories, though—no point pretending otherwise. It was good to have a break from the fear. Though, as I picked up my phone and turned off the recorder, I had a shivery thought of the many new ghosts freshly haunting this pandemic city—and the many more to come. I hope this whole thing will be over soon.

Back here in my little broom closet, I immediately got to work transcribing the evening’s stories and adding my own commentary. It took me half the night, but even then I was still wide awake—for some reason I’d lately almost completely lost the desire to sleep. I lay down on my bed anyway and was awake for a long time. Sure enough, those footsteps started up again, as slow and measured as the tolling of the bells. And then I heard the distant music of a Wurlitzer piano coming from somewhere in the building, playing a slow, dreamy rendition of an old jazz tune, and it made me feel lonelier than ever.