With my ears sealed against the world, I felt the shock of each step as my feet struck the pavement. I was so deep inside myself that I didn’t immediately notice the woman stopped on the sidewalk in front of me. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear the words.

I was on my way home from a bar. Earlier, I had been kidnapped by one of my periodic blue moods: a beguiling combination of oppressive loneliness and claustrophobia at the thought of all the human longing being played out in the towers and the streets, in the privacy of little urban rooms. I didn’t have the patience for reading, my usual strategy of escape, and I don’t own a television. So I paced the rooms of my apartment, listening to Chet Baker records until I tired of the repetition. I took my notebook and went for a beer at McLaughlin’s. There was something soothing in the voices, the clank of glass, and the jukebox’s moan, men and women talking and laughing in the smoky intimate light. I could never entirely rid myself of the hope that I’d find a beautiful woman sipping whiskey all alone in the corner. Our eyes would meet. I’d buy her a drink. We’d step from the frame of the Hopper painting that was our lives.

She was never there, of course.

After two beers I shouldered out the door, back into the midnight streets. The world had begun to veil itself in mist, and I stuck my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. Tumbling stray coins through my fingers, I came upon the little foam plugs I sometimes tuck in my ears when I read on the train. What if I were deaf? What would a walk in the street after midnight be like if it were bled entirely of sound? I stuck the plugs in my ears to find out.

Now, feeling rather foolish, I re-moved them so I could hear what the woman in front of me was saying.

'I’m sorry?' I said.

'Pico,' she said.

'What?' I said.

'You’re Pico,' she said.

'Uh, no,' I said.

She claimed she recognized me. She said I’d lived with my girlfriend 'over there,' making a vague sweep with her arm. I told her it was true that a year earlier I had lived with L. on 34th Street, somewhat in the direction she’d indicated. But I now lived alone, and my name was definitely Phil, not Pico. Seemingly persuaded, she explained that Pico’s girlfriend would come to his apartment at night, pound on his door, and shout at him. With each word, I was more and more pleased not to be Pico.

I asked what her name was.

'Michelle,' she said, lowering her head, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, back and forth in a slow, scissoring motion. She was thin, chocolate-skinned, late twenties I guessed. She wore white tennis shoes and white socks, black shorts, and a light rain jacket. She had a gym bag hooked over one shoulder. Her short hair was pinned flat to her head. I noticed she had nice legs and small, girlish breasts.