Summary

The third-person narrator opens the short story with an all-knowing description of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of lower Manhattan in New York City. The district is characterized by its warrens of small, winding streets forming many confusing intersections known as "places," whose low rents made it attractive to artists who found it an ideal place to settle and dodge the bill collectors who came calling to settle accounts for painting supplies. On the top floor of one three story brick building is the studio and home of Sue and Johanna, known as Johnsy, who had met the previous May at a local restaurant and formed an instant bond over their shared interests, soon moving in together. Now it is November, and with the cold a pneumonia outbreak has been claiming lives around the city, finally making its way into the remote artists colony...