At each of the four landings a window offers a different view of laundry hanging from lines: flowered sheets, baby clothes, sweatpants; lurid in their inexpensive newness; not at all the sort of old-fashioned laundry—dark socks and elaborate women’s underwear, faded house-dresses, luminous white shirts—that would make the air shaft feel like something ordinary but marvelous, preserved from another time.
