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There were occasional ventures to a corner bake-shop for raisin rolls and to the delicatessen next door for a quarter-pound of Bologna sausage sliced into slivers while she waited. She would sit on the cot-edge munching alternately from sliver to roll, gulping through a throat that was continually tight with wanting to cry, yet would not relax for that relief.
There was a sign inserted in the lower front window: ROOMS. LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING. She would sit in that room, so heavy with its odor of mildew, her window closed against the long, sweetly warm days, hunched dumbly on the cot-edge and staring into the stripe and vine, stripe and vine of the wall-paper design, or lie back when the ache along her spine began to set in.
She left before her first hour was completed, crying, her finger-tips stinging, two nails broken. Finally came that chimera of an hour when she laid down her last coin for the raisin rolls. She ate them on the cot-edge.
The door to the little bedroom stood open, her pink scarf uppermost on the cot-edge. She stood for an instant in the doorway, regarding and wanting it, but quite as suddenly turned, and down the three flights gained the dewy quiet of out-of-doors, fighting muzziness. The street had long since fallen tranquil, the Greek church casting immense shadow.
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