In the early morning the cloudy air had a texture like wet wool. The sky radiated colorless heat like a pool of warm water which one saw into from the depths. Work had not yet begun on the corner house, but in front of it dangled platforms suspended from pulleys. The vacant windows smeared with paint gave the house the look of a silly face smeared with weeping, an expression of tortured immobility.
Alice, on her way to work, had just emerged from her front doorway. As she descended to the street she watched ahead of her a tall, very thin woman in a worn silk blouse and an old skirt that still smacked of an ultra mode. The woman dragged beside her a very little boy in tight pants and a gay shirt. The little boy, swinging by her hand, leaned heavily away from her to pull a small red wooden wagon after him.
When the woman turned her head Alice saw her bright blonde hair combed in glossy and salient puffs, a cheap and unconscious defiance above her wasted face and her breasts, sucked dry on her flat body.
Alice walked after her. Life. Thinking of money. In the hot bed they touched each other. Rent due. The child began to cry.
Old maid barricaded behind ridicule. Coolness of being outside. Loneliness like a cool wound.
The woman went on. Taller, narrower in distance, with her long limbs and graceful stoop she resembled a sculptured angel. Tomb. Apartment. The woman walked before Alice into a narrow marble doorway. The stone rolled back and the angel went into the tomb. Haggard and bitter face. A little rouge put on carelessly. Despair. No one knows why.
Laurence had come in during the night and gone to sleep on the box couch without disturbing Winnie. In the morning she was the first to awaken.
It had rained before dawn. The hot sun floated outside the window in voluptuous mists. The white curtains seemed stained with the pinkish-brown light. They swayed and parted and between their folds the moist air flowed heavily from the steaming street.
Winnie could hear the staccato tap of a hammer on the house next door. Horses' hoofs rang on the asphalt with a flat sound.