I come home after the reading and there’s heat. I’ve never been so happy about heat before. All day I was dreading the cold night in the apartment and worrying about Karen being comfortable. I walked Gyorgyi to the bus stop at 14th and 3rd and really became involved with that no-heat dread. I walked up the stairs with the juvenile delinquent on the sixth floor who’s always screaming at his mother and beating his friends up and I’m explaining to him the court action that’s going to happen on Friday and how the tenants are organized and we’re trying our best to get heat for ourselves. Even the lawyers are always saying what a good group we are, but I’m not sure he knows that everyone at those tenant meetings is a poet, so some of that fraternal determination is due from our being glad to see each other.

In through the street door, noticing in the hallway and then on the walk up five flights that it’s not as cold as it should be. Karen is walking around in pajamas like Doris Day, blowdrying her hair after a bath. Heat. The bathtub in the kitchen has some water in it with her underwear dangling over the