These are mostly photos of Mickey's apartment. She used to live upstairs from me. She was a little bit larger than thumbelina-size and had a way of sneaking up behind you (me) and offering a banana, adding: "I'm Mickey, like Mickey Mouse."

Three years ago, we had an electrical fire in our building that went up from the basement to the 1st floor and we were temporarily displaced. Mickey never recovered. She was already suffering from mild dementia, but someone found her upstairs "cooking money" a few weeks later; she was taken to a nursing home where she died soon after. I was never sure if she was cooking coins or bills--or even if she was using the stovetop or oven. I've always wanted to know.

I went upstairs to check on Mickey shortly after we returned to our apartments, post-fire. It was about 100 degrees outside and we had no electricity--no refrigeration or a/c.

I knocked first on her nighbor's door. He wasn't home. I heard a voice behind me, but almost as if it were behind and below: "You've gotta wonderful figya!" she yelled.

As soon as she left, it was clear many things would change, and that our building would (in some ways) catch up to the rest of the neighborhood: no more fuse boxes, a new owner, and many renovations. They tore up her apartment to make it into a more modern two bedroom, now occupied by two twenty-something guys.

The whole building was once Mickey's family home, all three floors. My apartment was probably half of their family parlor. Her sister still lives downstairs, next to me, in a rent-stabilized sixth of her original family home. She has no teeth and barely any hair left. A neighborhood hair dresser occasionally comes to poof up the wisps of hair into a small orb around her head. She wears housedresses and black knee socks. But more on the sister later. These are pictures of Mickey's apartment.