The previous night had been an extroverted evening: a reception at a temporary art exhibition where many of her works were on display and then a speech she gave to art students, faculty, and others interested in her art at a university in Albany. She told them that successful art could be a natural propensity or from just learning to paint when not having a natural propensity for it at all (usually something in between) + dispensing with any conventions that stifled an unbiased and uninhibited desire to play in ideas and see the wonder of everything anew. She supported her premise with quotations from Emerson, Thoreau, and myriad artists. It was a typical speech presented and specifically catered to those who yearned to hear motifs stressing independence even if it bordered on the absurd. To her the self should be married and revered but seeking uniqueness in a forest like a post Taoist or post Transcendentalist was to seek it from an external force. Still such was her audience and she would prostitute herself to them a little bit. As she was listening to Ravel's "Pavane pour une Infante Defunte" she heard the doorbell. She knew that she could not get up without the most trying effort so, staring at the fire alarm some seconds, she finally raised herself briefly. She pushed the "test" button and continued to press it for a long moment of a sonorous outcry. Was her door unlocked? She hoped it was and wasn't. She heard a door open and footsteps. She returned to the sofa. She wondered if it might be a bill collector, a life insurance salesman, or a well endowed and handsome rapist. A whole host of other possibilities entered her head. She told herself that whoever it was, thief or saint, if this person weren't scared away by the fire alarm, she would demand that he or she go buy her some asprin. Surely it wasn't Lily. She hadn't spoken to her for so long and she would never be able to figure out how to get to this city let alone her home. Was that it? Had she used Rita/Lily to fulfill her limited social requirements and then dumped her, figuratively, on the side of the freeway linking to Albany? Had she forgotten about her when there were other people in her life? Were all humans this way? Was there no such thing as caring? She heard further steps pursue the top story...or was she imagining them? She wanted to push the fire alarm again--it didn't make sense but in her pained mind the sound of the fire alarm would make robbers leave and Zulu witch doctors with instantaneous and magical remedies appear. She did not, however, have the energy and that fly kept buzzing around her ears. She kept swatting it but missing it each time. The footsteps were those of a man's. She heard boot soles clunking hurriedly up the stairs under her miniature chandalier. Were they Michael's footsteps? No, surely not and yet she hoped they were all the same. There before her, in leather boots,was Hispanic Betty.