Gloomy morning, gloomy woman. Upstairs in Apt. 401 lives a couple with a baby that cries and cries, a subscription to Bon Appetit and More, and a tendency to move the furniture at six am. The woman owns a hair salon; I often spy her clients, shower-capped and plastic-caped, wandering dazedly in the hall downstairs, inquiring Where's the bathroom?

According to the morning-long clatter of heels, Saturdays are busy days. A blow-dryer screams and, scratching above the din, a voice that is hers: plaintive fuzzy human noise, somehow the voice of a mother and a wife and a hair-dresser. Water used to wash the middle-aged hair of her clients run relentlessly in the pipes above my head. I think, I need to get out; let the wind run under my scalp.




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