It was going to be a lousy day. She was sure of that, even before she vanished.

She felt rotten, for one thing. Sodden, as if she were coming down with the flu. The subway rocked and chattered its way downtown and the motion made her head feel like an accordion, going in and out. And it was rush hour. Monday morning, 8:45. Every seat on the train was filled. Commuters stood packed tightly in the aisle, pressed flat against the doors. She stood in the middle of them. She clutched her purse tight under her arm. She gripped the metal pole with her free hand. Gray shoulders, black faces, lip-sticked mouths—they pressed in close to her. The smells of them: sharp cologne; flowery perfume; sweat and shampoo and sickly sweet deodorant. They mingled in her nostrils. They clogged her brain. The train swayed. The bodies jostled her.

Oh man, she thought. This is going to be the worst.

The train stopped at Prince Street. The doors slid open on the long station’s yellowing walls. The crowd on the platform struggled briefly with the crowd in the train. Faintly, over the noise, she heard the sound of a Dixieland band. She caught a glimpse of it through the doors. A white man blowing a trumpet, his cheeks ballooned.

“painted lips, painted eyes;
wearin’ a bird of paradise …”

I know that song, she thought. Dad used to sing that song sometimes.

The title eluded her for a second. Then the trumpet brought it home: “Nobody’s Sweetheart.”

“It all seems wrong somehow.
Cause you’re nobody’s sweetheart now.”

The doors slid shut. The train jolted on. The music had made her sad, nostalgic: like a glimpse of sunlight to the prisoner in her cell. She closed her eyes as the train rocked, as the people pressed against her. Oh God, she prayed without much hope; oh God, make it the weekend. Okay? I’ll just open my eyes and poof, it’ll be Saturday. Okay? C’mon, you crazy guy, you God. Let ’er rip. You can do it. You’re the big guy. Ready. One, two, three. Poof.

She opened her eyes. That God. He had a lot to answer for, if you asked her.

She stuck out her tongue and made a gagging noise. It was drowned completely by the rattle of the train.

Leaning against her pole, she went on thinking about the weekend. Only five days away. Then Friday night would come around. She and Maura could go down to the Village. Dress bad. Something tight, something black. Sit at a bar, at Lancer’s maybe. Drink espresso, pretend to like it. Pretend they weren’t just this side of virginity. Pretend they might meet some guys. Or maybe they actually would meet some guys. You never knew. Maybe some half-scary Village type, some poet or something, would take the barstool next to her. A shaggy-haired poet with a haggard face, a bulky sweater …

“Canal Street,” the motorman called over the speaker. “Watch the closing doors.”

She was washed this way and that by the tide of commuters getting off, getting on. She gripped her purse, gripped her pole. The train coughed and chugged away again. The black tunnels whispered at the window. She peered into the middle distance. She began expanding on this poet idea. She liked it. She could picture him. A barrel-chested grizzly bear of a guy. A guy who thumped when he walked. Talked in gutturals, cursed all the time. But with these warm brown eyes just for her—he was a regular puppy dog when he took hold of her shoulders, when he gazed down at her. You hadda love him, in spite of everything.

She stared into space as the subway sped on. Woof, she thought.

Late at night, she would wake up in the little bed in his attic studio. She would lie quietly, naked under the single sheet. Oh, Mom would just have fits if she slept in the nude at home. But Mom—her sedate, little dumpling of a Mom—would be far away. She would be in her faded Gramercy apartment. And silver-haired Dad would have turned off the cable news. Would have stood up by then and stretched and said, “Ah well, no sense waiting up for her.” And taken his beer to bed.

But her poet would be awake still. Sitting at his desk in the midnight garret. While she lay on her side, naked under the single sheet. Pretending to be asleep, watching him secretly. He would be hunched over his notebook in the circle of lamplight, his pen moving feverishly, his eyes feverishly bright.

“This is the animal hour,” he would write.

The slow October flies, despairing on the porch chairs,
blink into the shards of the sun they see setting.

Blue and then a deeper blue ease into the air …

And she would wait and watch beneath the thin, stained sheet. And he would get tired finally. He would lay his pen down finally and rest his head against his hands. And then she would stir, she would whisper to him: “Come to bed now, darling.” She would peel the sheet back … Oh, Mom would definitely croak if she saw it. Even he—even her poet—would get a laugh out of it. He would stand up in his lumbering way. “You were such a good little repressed Irish Catholic girl when I met you,” he would say. “What have I done to you?” And then he would lumber toward her, ready to do it to her again.

“City Hall,” the motorman called.

She came to the surface with a goofy smile. Oh hell, she thought, letting her breath out. Nancy Kincaid’s Romantic Fantasy Number 712. The train stopped. The doors cracked open. The passengers flooded out into the station. She let herself be washed along.

Dull-headed, still vaguely dreaming about her poet, she joined the parade. The March of the Rush Hour New Yorkers. Gray suits, tidy dresses, legs striding along the platform, footsteps pattering in unison. Up the concrete stairs, knees high. Out into the vaulted gallery under the Municipal Building. A squat newsy, waving his papers, leaned into her face.

“Mother Eats Baby!” he shrieked. “Get the Post!”

She blinked, her daydream blown away. Thanks ever so much, she thought. She dodged around the screaming toad. Wove through the stout columns. Broke out into the open air.

Oh yes, that was good. The open air. She sucked it in as she waited for the light to change. Cool, cool leafy air. October air. Above her, the sky was big and blue. The cars spat past the great building’s sweeping colonnade. Here and there, marble courthouses loomed like temples over the roadway. Across from her, City Hall showed white through the red leaves of the oaks and the yellow leaves of the sycamores in the park.

The lights changed. The cars pulled up, snorting to go. She hurried across the street toward the park, toward the Hall.

She cut into the park. Seedy old park. Concrete walks curving through littered patches of grass. Homeless men hunkering on the green benches. Men in suits charging past her toward the small Hall. Policemen paced on the Hall steps, under its tiers of arched windows, its peeling dome, its statue of Justice with her scales. The wind blew and the leaves rained down from the sycamores all around her. They stirred and swirled on the paths. Nipped and chattered at her feet like Disney squirrels. The fresh air had made her head a little clearer now, but that nostalgic sadness was rising inside her again.

When you walk down the avenue,
I just can’t believe it’s you …

It was just—what?—five months ago, she thought. Five months ago she had been in college. Just last May. She had hurried just like this across the small campus on the West Side. She could remember the weight of her dance bag over her shoulder, the feel of her leotards snug under her clothes. Had she really thought she was going to be a dancer then? Had she really believed that? The daydreams—the ones about going to auditions, winning parts. “You. The girl with the blue eyes. The part is yours.” The feeling of strong hands closing on her waist in the spotlit dark. The footlights washing everything away as she was lifted off her feet. The sound of applause. Loud, loud, long-lasting applause. Had she ever really thought any of that was going to become real?

Nah. Probably not. At least, she wasn’t sure anymore whether she had. She couldn’t remember.

It all seems wrong somehow,
Cause you’re nobody’s sweetheart now …

She passed the Hall, came out of the park onto Broadway. The office building was right across the street. A tall thin tower, white stone, ornate as an altarpiece. Filigree scrolling up the arched windows. Gibbering gargoyles peering out over the high ledges, grinning viciously.

Anyway, she had taken the job with Fernando Woodlawn the first chance she got. She hadn’t been out of school a week. Her father said Woodlawn needed an assistant and, bingo, she had agreed to interview for the spot right away. No dance auditions, not a one. Not even any of the dance classes she had planned to take. And as for “You. The girl with the blue eyes,” you could pretty much forget about it. Oh, she still looked at the trade papers now and then. She still told herself she’d start classes again next week, next month; start going to auditions—soon, real soon. But basically, she knew it wasn’t so. Basically, she had become the personal assistant to an attorney friend of her father’s, and that was pretty much that. Christ, she thought as she reached the curb, I haven’t even moved away from home. Her mother had said, “You can still stay here while you’re looking for an apartment.” And though she had looked for an apartment one Sunday afternoon, she soon found there wasn’t enough time for that and, of course, she wanted to save her money too and, well … there she was.

NANCY KINCAID LEARNS TRUTH ABOUT SELF! COWARDICE EATS FUTURE! Get the Post!

She stepped off the sidewalk. Dashed into a break in the Broadway traffic. Ran to the opposite curb. There was a deli there, on the ground floor of her building. Its plate-glass window was decorated for Halloween with paper jack-o’-lanterns and snarling skeletons. On one side, a huge black bat with a phosphorescent stare darkened the glass. She could see her reflection in it. She paused to look herself over.

She was a small, slender woman. Still with a girl’s figure really. Still with a lot of girl about her face too. It was a round, open face. Too broad and flat, she thought. Too strong in the jaw. But she had curly red-brown hair that tumbled to her shoulders and softened the effect a little. And her eyes—not only were they a delicate china blue, but they appeared very frank, very straightforward. Her friend Maura always said they made her look intelligent and honest.

The subway ride had left her a tousled mess. She brushed at her hair. Smoothed down her imitation camel hair trench-coat. Adjusted the green tam-o’-shanter on the crown of her head. Intelligent and honest, she thought. Not as good as, say, smoldering and mysterious. But there must be some guys who like intelligent and honest. Somewhere. Maybe.

She let out a sigh. Went into the building, plucking her compact from her purse as she shouldered through the door. She redid her lipstick, waiting for the elevator. Smoothed away a smudge of mascara.

Painted lips, painted eyes.
Wearin’ a bird of paradise.
Oh, it all seems wrong somehow …

The decorated steel door of the old elevator slid open. She stepped into the little box. Just before the door clapped shut, she pulled off her tam and stuffed it into her trench coat pocket. More businesslike. Less schoolgirl.

She rode up to the twelfth floor. Stepped out into the reception area of Woodlawn, Jesse and Goldstein. Old aqua sofas. A coffee table covered with copies of the Law Journal. A heavyset black woman reading a newspaper behind a pane of glass. Nancy waved to her. The woman hardly glanced up as she buzzed her through the low wooden gate.

Here there was a single broad hall, a row of offices on either side. Gunmetal desks and maroon swivel chairs behind walls of windows and brown wood. Everything buried under papers. Folders and briefs stacked in the corners of everybody’s floor. Open file cabinets, skewed bookshelves. Pretty dingy stuff, all in all. Nancy remembered that she’d been shocked the first time she’d seen it. How could these be the offices of the great Fernando Woodlawn?

She had heard about Woodlawn since she was a child. Every time his name was in a newspaper, Dad would go on and on about him. I always knew he was destined for big things! A real world beater! A true legal mind!

Poor Dad, she thought. The sweetest, gentlest man in the world really, but as a lawyer he was never much more than a maker of wills. And as a politician, he was downright proud to be a licker of envelopes for his beloved Democrats. His sole claim to fame was that he had gone to Brooklyn Law School with Fernando. “Lifted many a beer with the man between one class and another.” Dad just never stopped being proud of that. He took personal satisfaction in Fernando’s big real estate deals. His meetings with the mayor. His battles with the governor. He even bragged about the patronage jobs Fernando had sent his way when he needed them. “All I ever had to say was, ‘I’m a little short this quarter, Fernando,’ and by God, within a week, I’d have more assessment appeals on my desk than I could handle.”

Poor Dad.

Well, she thought—she walked along the empty corridor toward her own office down at the end—soon Dad would have cause to be even prouder, God bless him. She wasn’t allowed to tell him yet, but it seemed fairly certain that Fernando was on his way to Albany. The governor, it was pretty much agreed, was through. He’d been taking a slow-motion nose dive in the polls for over a year, and the new tax hikes he was going to need to balance the budget were sure to finish him off. If the Democrats were going to stay in power, he’d either have to step down next year or risk a humiliating defeat at his own convention. So the field was open—and guess who was at the starting gate. If the new Ashley Towers project got approved this week, Fernando would be able to farm out enough legal work to the party leaders to virtually assure himself the nomination. And with the state Republicans completely in disarray, Governor Fernando was looking like a very good bet.

Nancy’s head throbbed again as she thought about it. It was going to be hell this week. It was going to be just like last week. The inside lines ringing. The conversations in whispers. The sudden bursts of shouting. “I want it! Now! Let’s go! Let’s go!” She had begun to live in terror of the next harsh hiss over her intercom. “Nancy! Come here! I need to talk to you!”

There was a photograph on Fernando’s wall—it was visible through the glass as she passed it now. It was a two-page spread cut from an article in Downtowner magazine. The article had run about four months ago. It was the first interview in which Fernando had hinted at his intention to run for the statehouse. “Floating the balloon,” he called it: it was the start of all the craziness. The magazine’s photographer had come to the office and spent the whole day following Fernando around. And Fernando had charmed the kid as only he could. Shoulder slaps, racy jokes; he even took the kid and his girlfriend out to dinner when the day was through. The result was that photograph. Practically a campaign poster. Fernando, leaning forward over his desk, with a wide-angle view of downtown Manhattan spread out behind him. Fernando’s shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. His thin forearms corded and throbbing as he thrust himself forward. His whole wiry frame seemed coiled, ready to spring over the desktop and into the lens. And his thin face, the blade-sharp features—they were burning like a laser with his craving and his glee. It was Governor Fernando, all right. And the sight of that photo as she went by actually made Nancy’s stomach boil with anxiety.

With another sigh—almost a groan—she turned into her office. Her gunmetal desk, of course, was neat as a pin. Papers properly stacked in the corners. Computer keyboard lined with the desk’s edge. Even her monitor was tilted expectantly toward her chair.

She tossed her purse down on the desk and headed straight for the window. She was beginning to feel muzzy again and wanted some more of that fresh air. She grabbed the bottom of the heavy wooden frame and sent it rattling upward. She stuck her head out into the smell of dying leaves and car exhaust.

From twelve stories above, she could hear the cars honk softly down on Warren Street. She could even hear the sound of synchronized footsteps on the sidewalk, the Monday morning march to work. She glanced to her left. On the ledge just beside her, there was a gargoyle. He was a clownish gnome of white stone. He wore a peaked cap. His face jutted out over the street. He stared down at it. His features were frozen in unpleasant, wild-eyed laughter. She turned away from him, turned to the right. Craning her neck, she could just get a glimpse of Broadway. The clustered sycamores in the park. The Hall’s white dome. Justice holding her scales above the yellow leaves.

She breathed in the air gratefully, her eyes wide. She glanced back in the other direction.

The gargoyle had turned its head. It was grinning directly at her, its twisted face six inches from her own.

“Yikes!”

She pulled inside double quick. She backed away from the window, her hand to her chest. She could feel her heart fluttering against her fingers. Then she stopped. Her mouth open, she shook her head. She laughed.

“Whoa,” she said aloud.

What a weird thing to see! God! She felt her forehead with the back of her hand. Maybe she had a fever or something.

“Jeepers,” she whispered.

Well, then she went right back to that window. She stuck her head out again. For a second, she was half afraid the thing really would be staring at her.

Or creeping toward her. Oooh, she thought.

Luckily though, the creature was back in its proper place. Grinning down at the street below. Just as stationary as a piece of stone ought to be. She smiled at it.

“Excuse me, may I help you!”

The voice came suddenly from behind her and, bang, she started and cracked her head on the windowsill.

“Yowch. Darn it,” she said. She wheeled back into the office, rubbing her scalp hard. There was a woman there now. She was standing in the office doorway.

She was a black woman. Slim and busty. Fashionable in a bright red dress made vivid by her dark skin and her red lipstick. The woman was holding a folder under one arm. She was regarding Nancy with an expectant smile.

For a moment, though, Nancy could only continue to rub her head. “Hi,” she said through her teeth. “Boy, that really smarted.”

The black woman just hung there, her smile just hung there. “Is there something I can help you with?” she said.

“Uh … no,” said Nancy, a little confused. “I don’t think so.” She dropped her hand to her side finally. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I … I mean, are you waiting for someone?” the black woman said.

“Uh … no. No. I’m supposed to be here. You must be new. This is my office.”

The black woman gave a puzzled little laugh at that. “Well, no it’s not, actually,” she said. “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

Nancy gazed at her blankly.

When you walk down the avenue …

She blinked. “Uh … Excuse me? I’m sorry. What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think you’ve made a mistake,” the black woman said. “This is definitely not your office.”

Slowly, Nancy glanced around her, surveyed the place. Had she wandered into the wrong cubicle? “I’m … pretty sure this is the place,” she said more slowly. “Isn’t this Nancy Kincaid’s office?”

I just can’t believe it’s you …

The black woman stared at her for a long moment. The stare seemed dark. Deep. Empty.

Oh, it all seems wrong somehow …

“Well … yes,” the black woman said after a long moment. “Yes, it is Nancy Kincaid’s office.” And then she shook her head. Once. Slowly.

“But you’re not Nancy Kincaid.”

The phone rang. The baby started crying. The Shithead started pounding on the door.

For a moment, Avis did not know which way to turn. She stood in the center of the bare white living room, a small, paralyzed figure under the ceiling’s naked bulb. Her hands were in the air, her fingers splayed. Her sweet, pale face seemed frozen.

The phone rang again and again. The baby kept crying for her. The Shithead hammered the door hard and now he was shouting too.

“Avis! Avis, I know you’re in there! Open the goddamned door, Avis! You’re my fucking wife, now open the goddamned door!”

Avis put her hands to her hair—short curls of dirty-blonde hair. She blinked once behind the huge, square frames of her glasses.

“Avis! I’m telling you! I know you’re there!”

The baby’s crying, she thought. Get the baby.

She could hear the rhythmic wails from the bedroom: “Aah! Aah! Aah!”

The kitchenette phone shrilled in between. And wham! wham! wham! went the Shithead’s fist.

“It’s my baby too, Avis! You can’t keep me away from my own goddamned baby!”

But Avis stood there, stunned, yet another moment. It had all happened too quickly for her.

Just thirty seconds ago, she had been sitting in the empty room quietly. She had been perched on the canvas chair before the folding card table. She had been resting her hands on the keys of her portable Olivetti, staring at the page peeling off the roller. It was the last page of her report on Thirty Below, a thriller novel set here in New York City. She wrote reports like this for a living. She read novels and wrote synopses of them. Then she wrote her opinion on whether or not the novels’ plots would make good movies. She sent these reports to the office of Victory Pictures, so that the Victory executives could pretend that they had read the novels and had opinions. She was paid sixty dollars for each report.

On this report, on this page, she had just typed: “This exciting urban thriller—reminiscent of Marathon Man—could be a good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman.” She had been sitting in the canvas chair, staring at that sentence.

Dustin Hoffman, she had been thinking. A good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman. I don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent next month, and I’m writing about vehicles for Dustin Hoffman. How am I going to buy diapers for my baby, Dustin Hoffman? Tell me that, you stupid millionaire sitting by your pool someplace drinking champagne! My little baby doesn’t have good clothes to wear, Mr. Dusty, Mr. Dust-man, and if he were on fucking fire YOU WOULDN’T PISS ON HIM TO PUT HIM OUT AND MY LIFE IS SHIT, YOU MOVIE STAR ASSHOLE! What am I going to do?

That is what she had been thinking. And her glasses had been beginning to fog with tears. And she had been thinking about how, if she hadn’t married the Shithead, she would have graduated from Kenyon this past year. And she would’ve come to New York and been a set designer instead of the wife of a starving actor. And she would not have allowed herself to get pregnant before her husband had even landed a paying role. And she would never have known what it felt like for a nice girl from Cleveland, Ohio, to lie curled on the kitchenette floor, trying to protect her womb with her arms while her husband punched her head again and again and again because it was her fault, all her fault, all of it, all of it …

A good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman, she had been thinking. Well, hot shit.

And then the phone had started ringing. The baby woke up and started to cry. The Shithead started pounding on the door.

“When I get in there, Avis, you are going to be one sorry girl, you understand me? If you don’t open this door right this second …”

Now, finally, her paralysis broke. She started for the bedroom, for the baby.

“Get the hell out of here, Randall,” she shouted over her shoulder. “You can’t come in here. Just go away.”

“Avis! Goddamnit!” He hit the door hard—with his shoulder it sounded like. The chain lock bounced and rattled.

The phone kept ringing.

“Aah! Aah! Aah!” the baby cried.

“I’m coming, sweetheart.” Avis pushed open the connecting door and ran into the bedroom.

It was just like The Wizard of Oz. Stepping from the living room into the bedroom: it was just like the scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy steps from her black-and-white Kansas house into the colorful world of Munchkinland. The living room was Kansas. The peeling white walls, the faded parquet floor; the card table, the chair, the bare bulb in the ceiling. The bedroom—the nursery—that was Oz, or Munchkinland or whatever. There was a riot of color and decoration here. The walls were plastered with Mickeys and Goofys and Kermit the Frogs. The floors were lined with toys and cushions, unicorns and rainbows. And so many dangling mobiles—elephant mobiles, lamb mobiles, airplane mobiles—that Avis had to push them out of her way as she ran to the crib by the bright window.

My apartment, she thought frantically. A good vehicle for Judy Garland. She reached the side of the crib.

The baby was waiting for her there, standing, gripping the crib’s top rail. He was a sturdy ten-month-old boy with sandy hair and blue eyes. He had pushed aside his handsewn quilt and was jumping up and down amid his embroidered pillows. The moment he saw her, he stopped crying. His puckered face smoothed and cleared. He broke into his huge, half-toothless, baby grin.

“Gee-ee-ee,” he said.

“Oh!” Avis breathed. “It’s da baby! Did da baby come to say hello? Hello to da baby!”

“Agga agga agga agga,” the baby said.

“This is bullshit, Avis!” She could still hear the Shithead screaming through the other room. “You cannot keep me out! This is not legal!” And—wham! It sounded like he hit the door with his whole body this time.

The phone shrilled again, insistent.

“Agga agga agga agga!” said the baby.

“Oh, da baby.” Avis hoisted him quickly out of the crib, held him against her shoulder.

“I’m gonna break this fucking door down, Avis, I mean it!”

He hit it hard again. The phone rang.

“Oh God,” Avis whispered.

She held her baby’s head gently as she rushed out of Oz, back into the living room. She blinked hard as her tears made the bare Kansas walls blur. She ran toward the kitchenette, toward the phone on the wall.

“Avis!” He was now hammering rapidly against the door with his fist: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang without stopping. “A-vis!”

“I’m going to call the police, Randall!” she called out, crying. “I’m serious!”

“Go ahead!” The fist kept hammering. ‘They’ll agree with me! You know they will! Go ahead!”

The baby made a small, frightened noise against her shoulder. She patted his head as she ran. “It’s all right,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Avis!” Bang-bang-bang.

The phone on the wall rang again just as she reached it. She snatched it up. Held it to her ear.

There was nothing. Then a dial tone. The caller had finally hung up.

“Oh shit!”

She slammed the phone down. The Shithead flung himself against the door so hard, so loudly, that she spun to face it. He did it again. The door seemed to bulge inward. She backed against the wall and stared at it. Where the fuck was Dustin Hoffman now?

“You hear me, Avis?”

The baby was starting to whimper, afraid.

“Ssh,” Avis said. She stroked him. She bit her lip as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Randall slammed into the door. She gasped. She thought she heard the wood cracking.

“Avis, goddamn it!”

“All right!” she shouted. And now the baby started crying. She stroked him, jogged him up and down. “All right, that’s it!” she screamed.

The Shithead pounded wildly. The door cracked and jumped in its frame.

“Avis!”

“That’s it!” she screamed. “Stop it right now, I swear to God, or that’s it, that’s it! I’m calling Perkins.”

On the instant, the pounding stopped. The screaming stopped. The room went silent except for the baby’s tentative cries. Avis held the boy against her shoulder, bounced him up and down. “Ssh,” she whispered. “It’s all right now. Ssh.” She sniffled. She took a quick swipe at her nose with her knuckles. More loudly, she said, “Do you hear me, Randall?”

The silence went on for another second. Then: “Damn it, Avis,” he said. But he did not shout now. He said it quietly. “Damn it.”

“I’m serious,” Avis said, jogging her baby. “I mean it. I’m going to call him. I’m going to call him right now.”

“Goddamn it,” came the voice—the suddenly little voice—from behind the door. “Look …” And then: “Goddamn it … Goddamn it, Avis, what do you have to pull shit like that for?”

“I mean it,” Avis called back. “I’m picking up the phone. Just go away, Randall. I’m picking up the phone right this minute.”

“A-vis,” the Shithead whined. “Come on. Come on, I mean it. Don’t do stuff like this. I mean it.”

“I’m dialing him. I’m dialing Perkins right now.”

The baby had lifted his head from her shoulder. He was looking around with wide-eyed interest. “Pah?” he wondered softly. The baby liked Perkins.

“Listen, Avis, could we just talk?” said Randall through the door.

She gritted her teeth. She hated this, the way he sounded now, the humiliation in his voice. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to leave him some pride. Maybe she could let him in, she thought. Even if he was a Shithead. Maybe they could just talk, just through the chain maybe. Just for a minute. She closed her eyes, took a breath. She forced herself to go through with it. “The phone is ringing, Randall,” she called.

“Shit,” he said softly through the door. But he tried one more time. “You know, I’m going to call my lawyer, Avis. I am. I’m gonna call my lawyer on this right now, today, as soon as I get home.”

She pressed her lips together, almost overwhelmed with pity. She knew Randall didn’t have any lawyer. She knew it was just something he said whenever he felt helpless and weak. The tears that had pooled in her glasses spilled out now in little streams. And still, she made herself go on. “It’s ringing, Randall. It’s ringing right … Hello! Perkins? Hi, it’s me, Avis.”

“All right, all right,” Randall said quickly. She could hear him moving away from the door now. She could hear his voice growing fainter. “All right, but I’m serious, Avis. You’re gonna hear from my lawyer on this. You can’t just do this. I got rights. I got rights, you know.”

But then there were his footsteps on the stairs. Tumbling down the stairs quickly. Practically running. She could imagine Randall shooting a terrified glance back over his shoulder as he skittered past Perkins’s door on the landing below.

“Pah?” said the baby, looking around with his big eyes.

Avis held him away from her so she could look in his face. He stared at her, wondering.

“Pah!” she said, blowing on him.

The baby thought that was hilarious and let out a loud laugh, kicking his legs.

Right beside them, the phone rang loudly. Avis jumped. The baby thought that was hilarious too. The phone rang again. Avis let her breath out, shook her head. The baby laughed some more.

“Ah ha ha!”

“Very funny,” Avis told him.

She caught up the phone as it rang a third time. She wedged the handset between her chin and shoulder. She held the baby out in the air. Made a face at him through her tears. He wriggled happily.

“Hello,” she said. She sniffled.

“Oh, Avis,” came the voice on the other end, an old woman’s voice, quavering. “Oh, Avis. Thank heavens. You’re finally there. It’s Ollie’s Nana, dear. I need him. I’m desperate. There’s been a catastrophe.”