“It’s not as fancy as it sounds,” Marcie laughed. “In fact it’s falling apart. That’s how I can afford it. But it has a wonderful view. Come over tonight. I’ll give you some dinner. I may be late, though, so I’ll leave a key for you under the doormat.” “Thanks, Marcie, I’d like to.” Laura wondered, when she hung up, if Marcie’s hospitality was always so impulsive. * * * * * It was dark and getting windy when Laura got off the subway at 99th Street. She walked the two blocks up Broadway to 101st, holding her coat collar close around her throat. The apartment building was a block off Broadway, up a hill at the corner of West End Avenue. It had been a chic address once, some years ago, when West End was an exclusive neighborhood. But it was deteriorating now, quietly, almost inconspicuously, slipping into the hands of ordinary people—families with lots of kids and not much money, students, working girls. And the _haut monde_ was quietly slipping out and heading for the other side of town. Laura entered the vestibule. It looked like the reception hall in a medieval fort. The only light came from a small bare bulb on a desk in one corner. The whole hall was full of heavy shadows. Laura found the elevator tucked into a corner and pressed the button. She swung slowly around on her heels to look at the hall while she waited. It gave her the shivers. She climbed into the elevator with misgivings. It looked well used and little cleaned. There was a paper sticker plastered on the wall above the button panel saying that it had passed inspection until June of that year. Laura looked it up and down and wondered if it would last till June. She reached the twelfth and last floor and walked out into a hall. To the right of the elevator she found a pair of swinging doors, and beyond them a steel staircase. She climbed the stairs, her heels ringing, and found herself in a short dark hall with two doors in it: one to the penthouse, one to the roof. Laura went out on the roof for a look. She walked over the red tiling toward a stone griffin carved on the railing and looked over it to the city. Below her, around her on all sides, sparkled New York. It honked and shouted down there, it murmured and sighed, it blinked and glittered like a gorgeous whore waiting to be conquered. Laura breathed deep and smiled secretly at it. She could live with a dank front hall and patched up elevator for a view like this. It was ten minutes before she went into the dark corridor again and found the penthouse door. She rang twice and when there was no answer she fumbled in the darkness for the key under the mat and unlocked the door. It opened into an unlit living room. Laura went in, shut the door behind her and stumbled around looking for a light switch. She knocked something off a table and heard it break before she discovered a lamp in a far corner and pulled the cord.