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In the ashen day beyond the window, light pulsed, pulsed again, so that the building next door, just six feet away, seemed to leap closer, as if collapsing toward us, and in the aftermath of those flashes, thunder rolled deep in the throat of the sky.

The woman started around the bed, and I thought about jumping onto it and plunging across it, but I knew she’d catch me before I reached the door.

“You don’t scare me,” I said.

“Then you’re stupid. A stupid, lying little snoop.”

Backing into the corner, acutely aware of my vulnerability, I said, “I’ll bite.”

“Then you’ll be bitten.”

She was maybe five foot seven. I was a lot shorter. I felt like a pygmy, if you want to know.

As she rounded the foot of the bed and as stutters of lightning again broke across the wall beyond the window, I said, “The thing is, I saw you in a dream.”

This time when thunder chased the light, it seemed to me that she had brought the storm with her, had called it forth. “How old are you, snoop?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Better answer me.”

I shrugged. “Going on ten.”

“So you just turned nine.”

“Not just.”

She stopped and stood looking down at me, an arm’s length away. “You dream about girls, do you?”

“Just you. Once.”

“Awful young for a wet dream.”

Surprised, I said, “How’d you know there was water in it? At least the sound of water all around.”

Instead of answering me, she said, “Why did you follow me to the sixth floor, liar?”

“Like I said before. I recognized you from the dream. That’s the truth.”

At last an edge, just a thin one, came into her deadpan voice. “I don’t like you, snoop. I’d love to smash your monkey face. Don’t tempt me. Don’t you ever follow me again.”

“I won’t. Why would I? You’re not that interesting.”

“I can turn interesting from one second to the next, snoop, more interesting than you ever want to know. You stay away from the sixth floor.”

“I don’t need to go up there.”

“You don’t want to, either, unless you’re even dumber than I think. And you don’t want to be talking about me to anyone, not to anyone. You never saw me. We didn’t have this little chat. You get my point, snoop?”

“Yeah. All right. Okay. Whatever. Jeez.”

She stared at me for a long moment and then looked at the La Florentine box on the nightstand. “What’d you just put in there?”

“Nothing. Stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“My stuff.”