ELARA
The cold had an edge to it that last week's cold hadn't—not sharper exactly, but more present, the kind that found the gap between your collar and your scarf and reminded you that spring was still a negotiation. I'd wrapped the scarf twice and still felt it.
I'd been thinking about what Paulette had said. Brief cardiac episode. Medical language operated on its own economy.
I turned west on 79th. The last six blocks were residential, the sidewalks narrower, the buildings lower—brownstones and small prewar co-ops, a church with scaffolding around the steeple that had been there for two years, a dry cleaner whose window displayed a child's winter coat and a note reading UNCLAIMED—6 MONTHS, which I always found both sad and oddly touching, the idea of someone deciding that coat was wo
