Stan had stopped listening to Mimi about three months before she left for Tel Aviv. He got up everything morning with a mute button on.
He acknowledged his wife, prepared his own breakfast and left for his lab had he had done every morning at 8: 24 am for the last thirty years he'd had his lab at Columbia. Stepping out onto 106th Street, the sounds of New York burst forth like a symphony.
When he closed his eyes, he could hear his mother's voice singing to him as a child in German, hear the rattle of the traffic on Broadway, and after the short five minute walk, the sound of elevator bing, as it stopped on his floor.
After washing down and donning his lab clothes he swushed through the sterile door chute and entered into one of the most famous biochemistry labs in the City. Maybe he loved the lab more than his family