What I Loved

adolescence."
    Violet smiled at the slur.
    Bill continued. "May we always be a family as we are now. May we love each other for as long as we live."
    That night there was no piano lesson. When I closed my eyes, the only person I saw was Bill.
    I didn't visit the Bowery until the following fall. Bill drew and planned but didn't start the construction of his doors until September. It was a Sunday afternoon in late October. The sky was cloudy and the weather had turned very cold. After I turned my key in the lock of the steel door, I stepped into the dingy, darkened hallway and heard the noise of a door opening to my right. Startled by the sound of life from long-abandoned rooms, I turned and noticed two eyes, a pair of white eyebrows, and the dark brown nose of a man from between several chains. "Who's that?" he boomed at me in a voice so deep and rich I expected an echo.
    "I'm a friend of Bill Wechsler's," I said, and immediately wondered why I had bothered to explain my presence to this stranger.
    Instead of answering me, he shut the door fast. A loud rattle and two clinks followed his disappearance. As I climbed the stairs, wondering about the new tenant, I saw Lazlo leaving and took note of his orange vinyl pants and pointed black shoes. When we met, he drawled out a cool, "Hey, Leo," smiled at me, and I saw his teeth. One front tooth overlapped the other slightly, not an unusual feature, but in that instant, I knew that I had never seen his teeth before. Lazlo paused on a step.
    "Read your views book," he said. "Got it from Bill."
    "Really?"
    "It was great, man."
    "Why, thank you, Lazlo. I'm very flattered."
    Lazlo didn't move. He looked down at the step. "Thought I'd take you out to eat sometime, you know." He paused, moved his head up and down and beat a brief rhythm on his orange thigh as if an inaudible jazz tune had suddenly interrupted his speech. "You and Erica helped me out." Five more beats to his thigh. "You know."
    The muttered "you know" seemed to stand in place of "Would that be all right?" I said that I would be delighted to have dinner with him. Lazlo said, "Cool" and continued down the stairs. On the way, he patted the railing and moved his head to the beat of that same music, which must have been playing somewhere in the invisible corridors of his mind.
    "What's up with Lazlo?" I said to Bill. "First he smiled at me and then he invited me to dinner."
    "He's in love," Bill said. "He's madly, passionately in love with a girl named Pinky Navatsky. She's a great-looking dancer who performs with a company called Broken. A lot of shaking and contortion and sudden violent kicks. Maybe you've read about them."
    I shook my head.
    "His work's getting better, too. He's computerized those sticks. They move now, and I think the stuff is interesting. He's in a group show at P.S. 1."
    "And the stentorian voice on the first floor?"
    "Mr. Bob."
    "I didn't know those rooms had been rented."
    "They're not. He's squatting. He hasn't been here long. I don't know how he got in, but he's in now. He introduced himself to me as 'Mr. Bob.' We've got a deal that I keep him a secret from the landlord. Mr. Aiello almost never comes in from Bayonne anyway."
    "Mad?" I said.
    "Probably. Doesn't bother me. I've lived with crazy people all my life, and he needs a roof. I gave him some old kitchen stuff and Violet packed up a blanket and some dishes and a hot plate she had from her apartment. He likes Violet. Calls her 'Beauty.' "
    The studio had become a vast construction zone, crowded with materials, which made it look smaller than it really was. Doors of varying sizes lay in piles near the window along with stacks of Sheetrock. Sawdust and lumber scraps covered the floor. In front of me, however, were three oak doors of different heights attached to small rooms that were no wider or higher than the doors, although their depths seemed to vary.
    "Try the middle one," Bill said. "You have to go inside and close the door behind you. You're not claustrophobic, are you?"
    I shook my head.
    The door was only five feet five inches tall, which meant that I had to bend down to enter the space. After pulling the door shut behind me, I found myself hunched over in a plain white box, about six feet deep, with a glass ceiling for light and a cloudy mirrored floor. At my feet, I noticed what appeared to be a small pile of rags. Standing was so uncomfortable that I kneeled down to examine the rags, but when I touched them, I discovered that