The third floor apartment door was right at the top of the steps. In response to your knocking

there was a sudden excited clucking, or so it seemed from the hall- not unlike the sound of

chickens disturbed at rest. She was wearing the same house dress she always had on. It may

have been eight or ten or more years old. It was of a style that hadn't changed in fifty years.

She clucked on, as if she was expecting you. She had called the manager's office earlier, when

she discovered that she had no water coming out of the faucets. She assumed you were here in

response to that call. The water had been back on for hours, but she seemed to think there

were additional problems. She conveyed this information in a disjointed, stream-of-

consciousness rambling that included mention of her work during the second World War, and

how, when she was young, there were those who said she was crazy or had Alzheimer's, which

she wasn't or didn't, although now... of course...

...and people enter her apartment when she's out, moving things, or taking them.

You ask her if she would like you to move the window fan, on the floor next to the bathtub,

that was taking up a large portion of the room. No, she didn't want that. The fan was keeping

people from coming up through the floor. You wondered if that was why the living room was

covered with stuff: clothes, boxes, junk, trash. There was barely a path through the room.

There was so much it would take many hours to inventory. You wouldn't want to. You would

want to put on gloves and bag it all for disposal.

She was certainly correct about not having much water pressure in her kitchen faucets. Just as

certain were the two boxes of salt sitting on the porcelain counter next to the sink. You knew

for a fact that they had been sitting there two years ago. Right there. They must have been

untouched. Their deterioration had been unhampered. The splitting and slow collapse of the

cylindrical containers, and the salt, had created a kind of sculpture of neglect and disuse.

There was a battered pot on the stove containing uncooked elbow macaroni and a small

unopened flavor packet.

Disheveled, short grey and white hair, small and slender in the limbs. White socks and faded

blue slippers. She chattered away the entire time. Among other things, you learned that she

graduated from Eastern High School. One of the maintenance crew says she complained once

of alligators coming out of the toilet. He says she's been wearing that dress for the six and a

half years he's been on the job. Once, on a maintenance call to her apartment, his patience

with her grew thin. He told her to be quiet and go sit down in the other room. She did.

For the first time, you really looked at her. You saw the structure of her existence. It was

evident in every room she occupied. And of course, the lunacy, fragmentation, fear and loss,

bright behind the eyes.