Not bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, but bama bampa barama bam bammity bam bam bammity barampa FIRE! was the first thing she thought of because nobody ever banged on your apartment door in a building like this nobody would be so impolite as to even rap on your door with his knuckles unannounced in a building like this much less bang on it with both fists for this was not one fist pounding on the door but both fists bama barampa bam bam bammity barampa bam bam—

FIRE! she rose from the 18th-century burled-wood secretary, her grand-mother’s, where she always wrote her thank-you notes and hurried out of the study and across the living room toward the entry gallery absolutely by herself in all these rooms not one soul to look to for help because it was Sunday and her husband was still down in Palm Beach and none of the help, not even the Filipino, came in on Sundays—BAMMITY BAM BARAMPA terribly loud now that she was approaching the door, and an entirely new fear stopped her in her tracks.

Whoever was on the other side of that door was not yelling “Fire!” or anything else. A PUSH-IN ROBBER! She could feel her heart start hammering away in her rib cage. In all their years in this building, nothing even close to a push-in robbery had ever occurred. She had never heard of any such thing at any other co-op on Park Avenue, either. Push-in robberies happened out on Long Island in places like Hempstead and Roslyn or was it North Babylon, the last one she read about? in the Times? more likely the Post.

Now she was in the entry gallery no more than two feet from the door. In what she meant to be a loud, strong voice, she said, “Who is it?”

The banging stopped. With that slow syllable-by-syllable pronunciation most people would save for a cabdriver or some other servitor for whom English was not his first language, he said his name.

She let out her breath and immediately felt her runaway heart get hold of itself. It was merely the new tenant, the man who had the hedge fund with the whimsical name and “more money than God,” as her husband had put it, but why on earth was he creating such a ruckus?

Ever so gingerly, she opened the door. He was a meat-fed man wearing a rather shiny—silk?—and rather too vividly striped open shirt that paunched out slightly over his waistband. The waistband was down at hip-hugger level because the lower half of his fortyish body was squeezed into a pair of twentyish jeans—prefaded? distressed?—were those the right terms?—gloriously frayed at the bottoms of the pant legs, from which protruded a pair of long, shiny pointed alligator shoes. They looked like weapons.

“Oh,” she said. She started to add, “Please come in,” but the look on his face made her worry that he might do just that.

Without any preamble, no “Excuse me” or even “Hello,” much less “How do you do?”—and they had never had any communication other than a nod once on the elevator—he said, “I need to speak to your husband.” It was the sort of commanding voice that makes it clear that I need what I want—now.

Meekly: “He’s not here.”

Accusingly: “Where is he?”

It was none of his business, but he was so overbearing she heard herself confessing, “Palm Beach.”

The big man in the ridiculously tight jeans looked at her with his mouth open and his eyebrows squeezed together as if she had just told him something not only astonishing but implausible, beyond the boundaries of reason.

“I’ll probably be talking to him later on. If you’d like, I could tell him—”

“Ahhh … no,” he said in a lower, calmer voice. He suddenly turned his head away from her. Something had caught his eye. “Nice voz. Tiffany, right?”

It took her a moment to realize he meant “vase,” the vase on a little table in the entry gallery. Why he had pronounced it the French way she couldn’t imagine. She answered in a toneless voice, “No, I don’t think so.” In fact, it was older and considerably more precious than a Tiffany, but she hadn’t the faintest desire to prolong the conversation with any discussion of the higher ceramics.

“Looks like a Tiffany,” he said. He turned as if to leave but then swung back. “Maybe you could pass along one thing—for when he comes back from Palm Beach.” He gave the Palm Beach a certain edge, as if her husband’s being in Palm Beach were a pretentious or perhaps slothful and decadent act on his part. “Tell him I hope he’s having a good time. What’s the name of that club they have there, the Everest or something?”

“The Everglades”—and as soon as the words passed her lips, she knew she should have feigned ignorance.

“Well, tell him I hope he’s having a nice time at his club in Palm Beach, because my wife and I are having a lousy time in our apartment in New York.”

“My goodness. What’s happened?” She immediately regretted asking that too.

He took a deep breath … and then … a red storm blew.

“What’s happened? What’s happened is, I just spent $200,000 on a state-of-the-art positive-pressure HVAC system in our apartment, and I’ve gotta put in new windows to make it work right, and I gotta put four vents, four lousy little vents, through the walls of this building, which nobody’s ever gonna notice—and I’ve gotta do it now—AND THE BOARD IN ALL ITS AUGUST WISDOM IS BREAKING MY—OBSTRUCTING ME EVERY INCH OF THE WAY!” He paused. “Nawwww … don’t tell him that. Just let him enjoy himself in Palm Beach … at the club.”