nine o'clock
Memories love to be mumbled and chewed over -- the unconscious kind of articulation which comes with the years and for which youth has a wink and a quirk . A tiger cat with overfed sides and a stare that seemed to doze purred on the window-ledge , gold and unswerving of eye . The silence was like the singing inside of a shell , and into it rocked Mrs. Lipkind . By nine o'clock she was already glancing up at the clock , cocking her head to each and every of night 's creaks . By half after nine there were small and frequent periods of peering through cupped hands down into a street so remote that its traffic had neither shape nor identity . Once she went down a long slit of hallway to the front door , opening it and gazing out upon a fog-filled corridor that was papered in embossed leatherette , one speckled incandescent bulb lighting it sadly . There was something impregnable , even terrible to her in the featureless stare of the doors of three adjoining apartments .