Every morning on the way from his flat into the home office, Michael Ralston—a sort of analyst, if you will—takes a very minor detour. Nominally, it's to stretch his legs. He spends a great deal of time at a desk, and is somewhat prone to being sedentary, and the first thing his new physician had told him when he'd been released from St. Lawrence's was that vigorous exercise and plenty of air would be key to his recovery and swift reintegration back into the world. In truth, this side trip ensures Ralston's ability to regularly monitor the state of a particular third floor flat's window in which the flat's occupant is sometimes paid or otherwise convinced to string her laundry across.

On days such as this one, he arranges to take the train across town and pay a visit a relation of an old and now dead school friend. She's getting on in years, and he has a key to her flat which is a fact all of her neighbors know, and he thinks nothing at all about letting himself in. It isn't until Ralston is standing in the little hallway with one arm already out of his coat that he pauses. This place is nothing is not one of careful routine, and whatever record is being played at low volumes in the other room is one he's never heard before.

He slowly extracts himself the rest of the way from his coat, folding it over his arm. The dog headed cane is fetched back up from where it had been ambivalently leaned against the wall, but rather than clunking along directly into the sitting room, he simply carries it in hand so he might advance marginally more silently into the doorway.

It feels very inevitable to find a different person entirely waiting for him there among the chintz furniture as opposed to the little old woman who for so long has acted as his contact back to Moscow.

"I wasn't aware Aunt Jane had many guests," he manages rather than Who the fuck are you?