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And so it was that after a coffee at Puccini, they walked around the old neighborhood and found themselves on the street where they had first lived together, in an apartment that now seems enormous in hindsight, but then housed a roommate that made it feel small. An opportunity came up to buy the ugly house on the alley in front of them, the one where the old man had shoveled Sam’s dog shit back to their porch, and then where someone had set a Vespa on fire and they went running to call for the same old man to come out, which he did, not in pajamas, suggesting a delay of decorum, in the middle of the night. The shit wars were now behind them. If they could buy this fixer upper with a roof that had been caved in for some time, wouldn’t they turn the corner, but it wasn’t meant to be. Later, they peeked inside the lit windows and saw a raw wood ceiling and realized someone had given the nondescript house a dose of love and whimsy. It looked inviting still even after plans were made to head elsewhere. The flat grew larger, absent the roommate and the smell eventually dissipated. The old man who hung out his windows to wash had a stroke and was no longer seen from their kitchen. Claude, the resident bum, had found fame and fortune and had left the alley street too. And there they were walking down memory lane, by a house that as improbable as it may seem, the designer had just moved into after falling on hard luck professionally and personally. They too had fallen on hard luck, had turned corners, and yet, the street seemed heavy with promises broken and equal parts wonder about what lay ahead. One of them mused, “Not every house is a home.”

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