Summary

In New York City, several tenants of an apartment building—Claudia, Edith, Edward, Paulie, and Thomas—step outside in the middle of the night to watch the neighboring building as it burns down. Edith, who is the landlord of the building and has been growing senile in her old age, moves toward the building and attempts to step inside. A firefighter stops her, and Edward and Thomas help walk her back into the building. As she has aged, Edith has begun to let the apartment building fall into disrepair. She finds her current tenants pleasant but notes that each of them appears to suffer from some kind of social or physical disability.

Thomas once worked as an artist, but has found himself growing tired of the pretensions in his former circles and can no longer paint because of a stroke he has suffered...