On a Wednesday, my one day off from the boutique each week, I walked over to the small blue house where the painter was waiting for me. I’d met her in the boutique on that previous Sunday. She was one of those patrons who wasn’t content to let you rest behind the counter, to handle the business of shopping herself, but rather one to whom browsing should be a social activity, a chance to monopolize the attention of the sales attendant, to ask about that such item or this one, to ask about how you liked working there, and tell you about her own troubles while she rolled sample perfume onto her wrist.

If she dropped the milk, right now, and it hit the linoleum floor with a thud, and it's purple lid popped off, and the milk surged out with quick gasps of air, who would notice? If she let the Lucky Charms and the Band-Aids drop in the shallow flood of milk and she walked through the Employees Only entrance and out the receiving dock and kept walking, who would notice?