Leigh felt displaced; in her blue-checked cotton skirt and white blouse, she thought she must look like a refugee from a suburban supermarket. She stayed close to the food, compulsively eating meatballs, cheese and potato chips to fill the gaps between sips of her Bloody Mary and strained smiles shot at other guests. But she decided she preferred the company of these party strangers to the solitude of a strange hotel room. She wasn't ready to be alone.

There was a man smiling at her, appraising her as if she were another of the pieces of modern art littering the apartment. Leigh gulped her drink, to have an excuse to turn away to the bar for another. When she turned back the man was beside her.

"Relative, house-guest or governess?"

He was making fun of her. She decided she didn't like him, but felt exactly the opposite. He was a very pretty man.

"I'm an old friend. Of Callie's." She took a drink and gazed up at him defensively.

"I don't know many people here," he said. "You looked like you had the same problem. I'm an artist. I met Callie and Frank at my first exhibit, and they've been my most constant patrons."

She nodded, trying to remember what it was one said to men one met at parties.

"I'm Leigh Ward. Callie and I were good friends in college, but we'd gotten out of touch. I just ran into her by accident today."

The artist smiled. "You have a lovely face. Ever do any modeling?"

"Yes, well," she said, looking down into her drink, "in college, you know, I was an art major. We took turns in front of the life class."

"Maybe I could paint you. Going to be in the City long?"

"Um, well, maybe. I don't know."

The artist put down his glass. "Want to go somewhere?"

She glanced quickly back over her shoulder, for Sammy.

"Uh, or aren't you alone?"

"Yes ... I'm alone." He didn't know she was married. He lifted eyebrows. "I know a nice coffee house, but if you'd rather stay here."

"Let's go, I guess."

"Good girl." He smiled at her--he was awfully attractive. And an artist, someone to talk to. He was interested in her, and that pleased her, but of course she would tell him she was married, and he would shrug and smile and they would talk about art and maybe he would paint her. He took her glass.

"I'll have to run upstairs for my purse."

"Fine."

She started up the stairs. From behind he said, "Oh, they've got one of my charcoals up--I'll show you."

She had reached the turn in the stairs and saw it: a finely executed drawing of another staircase, a winding spiral stair, large enough so that she might almost move into the sketch and onto those other steps.

He stood behind her now, so close she felt his breath softly on the back of her neck when he spoke.

"I didn't think it was finished, but they did, and I needed the money so I said the hell with it. What do you think?"

She thought about leaning backward, falling into him, letting go.

"It's effective. It wouldn't be that interesting anywhere else, but in a stairwell it's very effective."

He wrapped his arms around her in a way that she could have taken as purely friendly, but didn't.

She felt herself slipping. "As a teacher of mine would have said, the artist definitely has control."

He laughed softly into her ear, and the warmth made her shiver.

"Oh, he knows what he's doing," he said softly. He moved beside her and slipped his arm around her waist. "Ill bet this purse of yours was only a clever ploy to get me upstairs."

They were climbing. "Oh, no, it's in this bedroom. Right here."

On the bed were three purses and a raincoat. He lifted them up and put them down on the floor outside the door, which he closed.

"That's to let the unfortunate others know this room is taken."

"Um, my purse..."

He grinned. "You have a fixation about it."

"It's all I've got."

He made a sympathetic face. "Well, you've got me, now."

They hadn't bothered to close the shutters, so light came up from the street. One shaft lay across the artist's face. He was pretending to be asleep. Leigh gazed around the narrow little room, wide awake. She felt like talking, and glanced at the handsome, closed face beside her. He was so young, and a stranger to her.

"When you were a child," she said softly, "did you think you came from somewhere else? That your parents were much too common to be your real people?"

Watching carefully, she caught the movement of his eyes beneath their lids.

"I understand," she continued, "that it's a common fantasy in intelligent or creative children. I was very creative as a child; I was going to be an artist, like you."

She looked around, expecting as always now, the child. She listened for his weeping, but the only sounds in the narrow room were those she made herself.

"People used to visit me when I was a child. They came at night, and stood by my bed, and told me strange things. I called them my dreams, although I knew they were something more than that. I don't know who they were, or where they came from, or why they came to me..." She faltered, hearing the pathetic sound of herself telling her secrets to a man who cared so little for her that he pretended to be asleep--a man she cared for so little she had not even asked his name.

Leigh slipped out of bed and found her clothes piled on the floor. She pulled them on carelessly, feeling sticky and in desperate need of a bathroom.

She stepped out of the bedroom, pulling the door shut after her, and stood on a little landing, bound by three closed doors and the caged, winding drop of the stairwell. Party sounds drifted up to her as she caught hold of a doorknob, hoping it was the bathroom.

It wasn't. The hallway light showed her two beds, and the outline of the children in them. She was about to back out again when she realized there were others in the room besides the children.

There was no hesitation. When she saw them, she knew them, and she was a child again, eager to hear their wonderful stories, and to feel the gentle wind of their touch.