The temperature is well below freezing, and the property manager has notified their tenants that the heating systems in their buildings cannot help but operate less efficiently in the present conditions. That must be the reason for my hearing, from inside the radiator: the violent bubbling of an unwatched stew; the desparate knocking of thousands of tiny gnomes; a tennis match greatly complicated by the nonstandard, coiled geometry of the court; the lurching of a vessel, like a boat or a stomach, at sea; a child slipping down the stairs; an alien turning to sludge in an unfavorable environment; a jazz drummer alone.