In the studio of a friend who was also a painter, and who she’d stopped to see on her way through the neighborhood, though she hadn’t known for certain that friend would be in, and had tried her buzzer only when she’d passed her building, and had happened to think of her (so that when her friend had answered and had let her in she’d been somewhat surprised, insofar as she hadn’t imagined she might be seeing her until a minute or so before she in fact did), she sat on the floor against a wall and watched as her friend worked on a canvas of her own, though after a while, because they’d started talking, and her friend found it difficult to talk and paint at the same time, as doing so divided her attention, her friend rinsed her brushes and lay them out to dry and stood back from the painting and regarded it with folded arms while continuing to talk, and sometimes to listen, before turning to her and sitting cross-legged on an area of floor where she’d been standing, somewhere in the middle of the room, and remained that way until their conversation had progressed from one subject to another, and they’d decided, more or less together, to get up and, because it was a nice day, go outside and walk to a store where they could buy a bottle of liquor that could be mixed with water or soda, or some kind of juice, so that they wouldn’t have to drink it straight, and bring it back to the friend’s studio, and keep talking.