Up the stairs then, pounding, back along a balustraded hall past the first door, ajar, to the second. She smacks it with the heel of her hand. “Open!” she calls. “I must speak with you!” Pounding. “Hello!” A deep breath. “I know you are within,” she says, more quietly. “It is of vital importance that I speak with you.”

Clack and scrape, the rattle of a bolt. The door opens enough to show a man peering over a taut-stretched security chain. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, low and close.

“But I am. I bear news of utmost importance.”

“I don’t give a shit if it’s life or death,” he hisses, “if you wake her, I’m gonna,” but then he catches himself, deflating.

“It concerns the roof over her head,” says Marfisa, “the floor, beneath her feet.”

He leans close to the gap, scowling. “How did you,” he says. “Who are you.”

“Eddie?” a querulous voice from somewhere behind him. He sags even more, shaking his head, dwindling hair of it clipped close. “Nothing, ma’am,” he says. “Solicitor. Go on, now. You need your rest.”

“Nothing, hell,” that voice. “Go on. Let ’em in.”

“No,” says Ettie, capping the stick with a disdainful moue.

“Go on,” says Chrissie, and Ettie does, a sudden, glorious grin, ostentatiously effortful, blatantly cruel, washing away to strand her stony affect. Costurere with a last pat for Chrissie’s coatee leans between them, rustle of white, bloomers and camisole, mob cap on her mousey hair. She takes up a little pot and a tiny brush, kneeling there by Ettie, who holds her half-done lips quite still as brilliant red’s applied. “It was easier, when we had the screen,” says Chrissie.

“It was easier with the owr, miss,” says Costurere, with a last deft twist to shape the Cupid’s bow. “If I’d be permitted to say so.”

“My lord,” says the Axehandle Agravante, sat at the foot of the table, his suit perhaps of the darkest blue. “If we might dispense with the matter at hand?”

“What I don’t understand,” says the other, reaching for another piece, “is how any of this does any of us any good.” Munching thoughtfully. “Girl already owns the whole damn building.”

The Guisarme snorts. “Tom Wilson,” says the Glaive, “the girl’s father, held controlling interest in a group invested in developing the property; actual questions of ownership, of the land, of the structures, and so forth, and so on, are, shall we say: murky.”

Steam billows from the shower, but she’s by the sink, long robe of buffalo plaid tied off about her waist, empty sleeves a-dangle. She’s smearing creme over her sunblasted shoulders, wincingly persisting till she catches sight of herself in the artfully oblong mirror, ragged hair, that nose, her thin-lipped grimace. From the rumple of robe about her hips a faintly puckered seam runs pinkly up and pale to an ovoid dimple the size of a thumbprint, sheened with a vague iridescence, canted in the middle of her breast.

Wrapped in that robe, squatting in the doorway, she works a plug in a socket. Strings of little yellow lights flick on. Up then, across the kitchen, past a dead bouquet, the counter littered with desiccated petals, brown-pink, black-purple. Down the three low steps into the open room beyond, windows left and right in walls that narrow to a point, and at the top of the room a great dark chair. Knee on the cushions, leaned close to the window, she looks down. A car preternaturally silent passes through the intersection. The marquee of the theater across the way is dark, but the letters can still be made out, Reds 600, Cinco de Mayo la Batalla, 930.

A pot left on an unlit burner, and something dried within rattles loose when she picks it up, sets it frowning in the sink. Shakes out a wadded dishtowel, folds it, leaves it a neat little square on the counter. Opens the fridge on a shrunken lemon half, a couple of wilted scallions, some cans of diet cola and a cardboard takeout box. A slender carton of milk, red and white, Alpenrose, it says. She pulls it out, pinches it open, tips it over a blue-lipped glass, but what pours out is thickly lumpy slopping, fouled, she hurls the carton splattering away to drop a-splot in the sink.

“Yeah?”

“On a scale of one to ten,” says Becker, “where one is very dissatisfied, and ten, ah, is very, very satisfied,” leaning close to the monitor that fills his narrow carrel, “how,” he says, “would you rate your satisfaction with, with your, ah, the welcome, you received, from the reception team?”

“Reception team. What’s that.”

“Ah, that’s what it says, sir.”

“Yeah, but, what is it? Is it like when a company decides they won’t call their employees employees, so, they’re like, associates, or cast members, or compadres, or whatever? I mean, reception team. The heck is that? The receptionist? Whoever it was gave me the new patient questionnaire?”

“It’s,” says Becker, “whatever it means to you, sir.”

“Well, that’s stupid.”

“Sir,” Becker adjusts the microphone of his headset. “Your experience with Pet Depot was, was yours, it was singular, unique–”

“Really?”

“– but if we take enough of those experiences–”

“I would’ve said it was pretty friggin’ generic. Pardon the French.”

“If we rate enough of those experiences, sir, measure them, consistently, systematically, we help Pet Depot better determine, ah, where they’re doing well, and where they need to improve, in providing service to, ah, pets, and their people.”

“Pets and their people.” A snort. “That yours? Or is that just what it says?”

“It hurts,” says Ysabel, her voice quite small.

“I know, lady.” Stroking once those short black curls, and here and there a sprig of silver. “But you’re safe. Everything’s going to be fine.” Pressing a folded towel to Ysabel’s throat, her cheek.

“Everything hurts,” says Ysabel, green eyes blinking, dull.

“I know, my lady.”

The freshly painted green and purple door flies open, Gloria bursting into the little windowless room, “What the fuck,” she’s saying, “what the absolute fuck, you brought her here?”

“Not so loud,” says Marfisa.

“Fuck loud,” growls Gloria, “fuck you, fuck this, this, this this is why we, this is the whole reason, this is,” but Marfisa’s lifting one of Ysabel’s hands to the towel, pressing it close, to hold it, getting to her feet, “she’s, she is why,” Gloria turns to follow her, “we’re here, in the first place,” as Marfisa gently shuts the door. “If you keep on like that,” she says, hand still on the knob, “everyone will hear.”

“Fuck everyone,” snarls Gloria.