ll be plenty of good food at the party, and why waste your appetite and money? No reason. You’ve a small appetite and little money. So go, go.” His feet feel funny and he’s stumbling. He looks down and sees the street’s made of cobblestones. When did he step off the sidewalk, he thinks, and the street turn from asphalt to this? Can’t remember. And there are no sidewalks anymore, just street right up to the buildings, and so narrow he doubts even a small car could pass through it. He goes under a stone arch that spans the entire street, and is now in this odd landscape of ruins, he’d call it — Italian, maybe old Roman, maybe Pompeiian. It looks like those paintings, or drawings, or whatever they are — prints, lithographs, if there’s a difference between the two — God, there’s so much he doesn’t know about art and ancient Western civilizations, he thinks — by a seventeenth- or eighteenth- or nineteenth-century artist whose name he forgets. It’s one word and starts with a P or T or maybe even a B — Bruneschi? Pinelli? Torichelli? — who did buildings like these: empty; gutted, even; with cracked and broken walls and no entrances or exits, or at least none he could ever find, and with mazes of hallways and dead-end staircases, some winding through roofs and going another story or two up. Unlike in those paintings or whatever they were — etchings, he now thinks — there are people on the street here, and outdoor markets and carts and stalls, most with fruits and vegetables or leather goods like wallets and bookmarks and eyeglass cases on them. Funny, he thinks, but in all the years he’s lived in this city, which is most of his life, and he got around, he’s never been in this neighborhood or even heard of it. Maybe if he knew its name. It’s charming, though. Who needs to go to old parts of European cities if we have this here? All the streetlamps go on at once. It’s gotten dark, while it was light when he said goodbye to his friend and started down here. He keeps walking, past more peddlers hawking their wares in Italian, or it could even be Latin — at his age, and with his education, he thinks, he should know the difference. He stops to look at two identical dilapidated Catholic churches side by side, with no airway in between. Both must still be working churches, he thinks. A bride and her maids of honor are going up the steps of one of them and a priest in a white smock and some kind of gold shawl around his neck is on the top step of the other, blessing an elderly couple, who are having trouble getting into a kneeling position. All the other buildings on both sides of the street seem uninhabited: no lights in any of the windows and nobody going in or out of them. The facades of several of them have been sandblasted or steam-cleaned — he thinks You’re not allowed to sandblast buildings anymore in New York; something to do with releasing asbestos into the air — and have signs on them advertising “luxurious” floor-through apartments for rent and condos for sale. “Fresca piss,” a man sitting behind a cart of iced fish says, and he says “No, thanks; I’ll be out too long.” He goes under another stone arch. The street sign on the corner of the first building to his left says Willis Street. That’s the one the party’s on, he thinks: number 22. He says to a woman “Excuse me, but which is Willis Street: the one we’re on or the side street perpendicular to it?” “Perpendicular?” she says. “Perpendicular? Don’t be perpendiculous. We both know you’re talking the wrong angle and Willis is this street here.” He hears what sounds like wooden wheels going over cobblestones; then sees coming out of the barely lit side street a man pushing a gurney. A woman in a hospital gown and sheet up to her waist is on it, securely strapped in. Must be terribly uncomfortable for her, he thinks, and even painful, especially if she had surgery and was just sewn up. The gurney passes him and he runs after it to tell the man, for his patient’s sake, to go on a less bumpy street. He gets in front of the gurney, blocking it. “What’s the big idea?” the man says. The woman’s eyes are closed. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable. In fact, she appears quite peaceful, seems to be smiling, and looks exactly like Gwen. But it can’t be her, he thinks; he hasn’t met her yet. “I’m sorry,” he says to the man; “I have the wrong party. Now that’s funny, because according to my best friend, who’s also an orderly, I’m on my way to the right party, one where I’m gonna meet my future wife.” “Funny to some, maybe,” the man says, “but to me it’s no joke. Marriage is sacred and shouldn’t be laughed at.” “Hey, you don’t have to tell me,” and he steps aside and the man resumes pushing the gurney in the direction of the churches. They going there to get married? he thinks. Can’t be; she’s destined for me. He looks at the numbers of the buildings he passes on the even-numbered side of Willis Street and stops at 22. It’s a long stoop and he runs up it. “Whew-wee, I took those steps as if I were a kid,” he says. “I really feel healthy and strong, so I must look it too, which’ll be a plus.” The front door’s unlocked and so is the vestibule’s. Very trusting building, he thinks. Good sign; seems the opposite of ominous as far as the party’s concerned. The ground floor’s dingy, with dim lights and torn lobby furniture and an urn of ugly plastic flowers on a side table by the elevator and walls that are stained and need plastering and painting. And the smelclass="underline" can’t be anything but roach spray. Bad sign, he thinks, for who starts a romance in a slum building? He presses the elevator button. “Oh, crap,” he says, “I forget the last name of the person giving the party and what her apartment number is or even what floor she’s on. It could even be this one.” He holds his breath and listens for party sounds from the three apartments on the floor, but doesn’t hear anything but a steady dripping. There’s a bad leak somewhere, he thinks. A woman enters the building and yells “Hold the elevator. Hold the elevator.” It’s Gwen, he thinks, though he doesn’t know her name yet. She hurries down the hallway and says “Now what gave me the idea it was waiting for me?” and sticks her hand out to press the elevator button. “I’ve already rung for it,” he says. “Been waiting for it I can’t tell you how long. Judging by the condition of the building, it’s probably broken.” “It’ll get here,” she says. “I know this building. The elevator’s old and takes its time but always comes.” “You going to the Willis party?” “Do you mean the Tourelle party? On the top floor? Not that there couldn’t be two going at once. This is a lively building.” “Tourelle, that’s right. Willis is the street we’re on. And it has to be the top floor. Otherwise, I’d walk.” The elevator comes, door opens, and he gestures with his hand for her to go in first. “I don’t know. Am I doing the right thing in riding alone in an elevator with you?” she says. “Because I’m not sure you were invited to the party or that you even belong in this building, although I do know you didn’t follow me in.” “I’m safe, believe me. I met our party host at an artist colony this summer. She was there for photography and I was there for something else. We were next-room neighbors and shared the same bathroom and bar of soap, but at different times. And four to five floors isn’t a long ride on an elevator, no matter how slow it goes, unless it gets stuck.” “Okay, you sold me,” she says, and gets in the elevator, he follows her, and she presses the button for the fifth floor and the elevator starts rising. “Five’s the top floor, right?” he says. “There’s none higher in this building,” she says, “and I know the party’s not on the roof.” “So the elevator doesn’t go to the roof?” and she says “Do you know of any that do? Oh, I suppose there’s one somewhere, but this isn’t that anomaly.” He wakes up. It’s almost light out. Must be around seven, he thinks. The dripping’s from the sink faucet in the bathroom and he gets up, turns it off, and gets back in bed. He did first meet Gwen at an elevator. But on the sixth floor of a much larger and better-kept building in SoHo, not far from the neighborhood or district or section or whatever’s the right word for it where the last scenes of the dream would have been if it were a real place, but after they’d left the party separately.