Statements 2 - Excerpt

4. Don't you think you ought to put on a robe instead of parading naked around the house, said Gregory. There are people out there. Gregory pointed at the houses on the other side of the park. You may not know it. It may not occur to you, but anyone looking into our apartment must get a curious impression of the way we live. We're on the eighteenth floor, she reminded him. I still wish you wouldn't walk around in the nude. I wonder if you have the vaguest idea of how irritating you are, said Maude. I merely suggested that you put on a robe. People talk. The doorman has been giving me the strangest looks for the past month. People talk. Is that what you would say to that glorious beauty in your study. You'd be off like a shot if you had the teeniest chance of fucking her. Oh well, said Gregory, I better to talk a walk. I don't want to stand in the way of one of your little melodramas. From their apartment on the eighteenth floor Maude can see the buildings on Fifth Avenue across the park. Using Gregory's binoculars, she can make out Gregory's tall figure in his blue blazer as he heads for the other side of the park, turning occasionally to look at someone who has attracted his attention. Once he turned around, as if sensing that he was being observed, and shading his eyes against the sun with one hand, stared at their building, at their floor, at her standing naked at the window. But at that distance she could not make out the expression. It never changed. He was going over to Madison to look at the latest exhibition of photographs at the Light Gallery.