At thirty-three, she had pushed herself into thinking like a wryly amused spinster as part of her careful pattern of convalescing, of making sure she'd never be struck down again by youthful emotions. But even when she had first come to New York and moved into the brownstone on Ninth Street, she had never identified herself with the girls in the apartment upstairs. They seemed to her as flighty and chattery as starlings.

There were always three of them in the floor-through apartment, but never the same three for long. Every time one got married and moved out, another one moved in. Most of the newcomers would come to her door smiling prettily, wanting extra ice cubes, or to chat with the only other tenant near their own age. They go the ice cubes and pleasant words, but they never got beyond the foyer. The way she turned herself off was a subtler form of the householder's dousing all the lights as a caller comes up the walk.

from Open the Door (1966)