The something she wanted to show turned out to be a narrow staircase at the back of the kitchen supply store that led to a rooftop terrace that the owner let people use when it wasn't raining. It had four mismatched chairs and a view over the commercial block to the campus and, further, the city.
"Whoa... the hell...?"
"How did you manage to find such a place?" Mike said.
"I was looking for mixing bowls," Ellie said. "The owner saw me looking at the view from the window and took me up."
"She's eighty-one, and she's been here since the building was new." She sat in one of the chairs. "I come up here sometimes when I want to think."
"Does it even work?" Mike said.
"Better than the alternative," she said. "Which is sitting in the house thinking about the same things in a smaller space."
He sat in the chair beside her. The city was doing its late-afternoon shift below them, the particular quality of a place transitioning between its working hours and its evening ones.
