and i imagined climbing the stairs of the tenement and the smell of cabbages and the reek of human desperation and her sour-faced broker who collected the money and protected her from the overzealous sailor or merchant marine , and then i imagined her room and the roughness of the boards beneath my bare feet and the roughness of her hands and the heaviness of her scent , and would it not be better to touch and be touched than to never touch at all ?