Pipe Dream

Simon Grue found a two-inch mermaid in his bathtub. It had arms, hips, a finny tail, and (here the real trouble began) a face that reminded him irresistibly of Grushenka Stulnikov-Gurevich....
It wasn't until the mermaid turned up in his bathtub that Simon Grue seriously began to wonder what the Russians were doing on the roof next door.
The old house next door together with its spacious tarpapered roof, which held a sort of pent-shack, a cylindrical old water tank, and several chicken-wire enclosures, had always been a focus of curiosity in this region of Greenwich Village, especially to whoever happened to be renting Simon's studio, the north window-cum-skylight of which looked down upon it—if you were exceptionally tall or if, like Simon, you stood halfway up a stepladder and peered.
During the 1920's, old-timers told Simon, the house had been owned by a bootlegger, who had installed a costly pipe organ and used the water tank to store hooch. Later there had been a colony of shaven-headed Buddhist monks, who had strolled about the roof in their orange and yellow robes, meditating and eating raw vegetables. There had followed a commedia dell' arte theatrical group, a fencing salon, a school of the organ (the bootlegger's organ was always one of the prime renting points of the house), an Arabian restaurant, several art schools and silvercraft shops of course, and an Existentialist coffee house.
The last occupants had been two bony-cheeked Swedish blondes who sunbathed interminably and had built the chicken-wire enclosures to cage a large number of sinister smoke-colored dogs—Simon decided they were breeding werewolves, and one of his most successful abstractions, Gray Hunger , had been painted to the inspiration of an eldritch howling. The dogs and their owners had departed abruptly one night in a closed van, without any of the dogs ever having been offered for sale or either of the girls having responded with anything more than a raised eyebrow to Simon's brave greetings of Skoal!