My desk faces the kitchen window of the apartment across the alley. For a long time I did not know whose kitchen it was. The light came on at 6:40 each evening, and went off near eleven, and that was the whole conversation.

In November the light came on at four. I noticed because I had been reading without one. I had been sitting in the dark, refusing the day, and the kitchen across the alley said, without meaning to: it is alright to want some light now. I got up and turned on my lamp.

I do not know who lives there. I have decided not to know. If we passed in the street I might recognize a coat, or a way of walking, and the small ceremony would be over.

There are people we are kept alive by, who do not know they are doing it. There are people I am keeping alive in the same way, I expect. A stranger somewhere is noticing that my window is lit, and is being given a small permission by it, and I will never know.

This is the part of the city I love most. Not the famous parts. The parts where strangers keep one another company at a useful distance.