In the city, laws that govern connection and space are suspended, as though one has entered an alternate atmosphere. Sometimes we want to be alone when we’re surrounded by people on every side, like the girl who talks to her long-distance therapist on the phone as she walks the streets because there’s no private place to sit and let her heart speak truly. Or the woman who sat in the coffee shop recently and dialed a far-away hospital to check on her elderly father, who was admitted the previous night. Some conversations seem too personal to be public, so we do our best to give space to one another, to grant what little privacy comes from averting our gaze and appearing to be lost in our own worlds (all the while, dying to know if he’s Okay). We listen to iPods on the subway to inhabit a solitude of our own creation. We become masters at reading body language to sense who needs space, who is open to connection. It’s not difficult—pedestrian living with 35,000 people in a square mile gives us ample practice.

We try to be alone when we’re together, but we also seek connection when we’re apart. My favorite place in my apartment is the kitchen window, which faces gardens and the rear windows of our neighboring street. I can’t help thinking of Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window when I gaze out and wonder at the lives people are living so close to me. Is the woman happy, sitting at her computer with her back to the window night after night as a man occasionally passes through her room? How old is their love? Is she up late writing, as I sometimes am? Other windows never show any sign of life.

What do they see in mine? Is anyone home to watch Amelia and I dance our way through dinner preparation, or the way I sit on the floor with Lucy in the early morning, holding my breath and dunking deep into the sleepy space of time? Does anyone but God bear witness to the moments when they are both inconsolable and clinging to me through tears, and I am at a loss? I’m not sure I want to know. Even so, I find myself raising the curtain in the dark early morning hours, as though to tell my red-kettled and backward-facing friends, I’m awake. I’m here.

Despite our contradictions, we do connect, often and unpredictably. This morning I asked the girl next to me at the bakery whose paintings were featured on the cover of her NY Times. She told me about two art robberies in Switzerland this week, the most recent being a theft of a Van Gogh, a Degas, a Monet and a Cezanne (estimated value $163 million) from Zurich. She says, “It’s weird to think about them right now, plotting their next move.” We spoke casually, like old friends. I thanked her and returned to my table, burying my face in my notebook. She brought me the article as she left.

It’s so fluid, this dance we step out with strangers. In the city there are no laws, and we improvise, inhabiting this alternate atmosphere together.