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living in my father’s apartment,” Doug announced. “And he thinks that I somehow agreed to this.”
    “Well, we did have a conversation about this last night, Doug, and I don’t think you could have been really surprised that Frank told you that,” I announced back. We were both pretending to be polite, but our voices were too forceful to count as polite.
    “Last night we were decent enough not to kick you out onto the street,” he told me. “The understanding was you’d be gone in the morning. You have no right to be here—your mother actually had no right to be here either, after my father died—”
    “That’s not what my lawyer tells me.”
    For some reason this caused old Doug to really lose it. He was suddenly furious, his face going all red, and he actually grabbed me, right up at the front of my shirt, and yanked me toward him, to do what I wasn’t sure. I was not expecting it; even last night when he showed up with his brother totally wasted, and they were both really mad and reactive, they didn’t put their hands on me. For one terrible minute I thought, oh no, this is one of those guys who’s worse when he’s
not
drunk; all that disappointment and sadness and thinning hair are just too much for him.
    “Let go of me, let go let go,” I said, real nice, real fast. I truly didn’t want to find out if he had it in him to hit me.
    “Look, I got a bunch of other jobs. Is this going to happen?” the guy with Doug asked. He had on a bad leather jacket and jeans and was carrying a tool kit, and he looked really bored. Somehow you knew rightaway that he saw this stuff all the time, people arguing about who had the right to change the locks to some house or apartment, and it wasn’t all that earth-shattering. I realized I was probably not going to get hit. Anyway, the lock guy didn’t seem to think so. He looked away like he didn’t give a shit who won this battle, but also like he was pretty sure it was not going to be me, so there was no use even acknowledging that I existed.
    The little interruption gave Doug a chance to recover. He let go of my shirt, giving me a little push, like he couldn’t believe he had actually touched me. Then he turned and yelled back at Frank, who was outside trying to hail a cab for the fed-up Mrs. Gideon and her babelicious daughter. “We’re going up!” Doug announced. Frank didn’t even notice. Doug and the locksmith headed for the elevator, but they couldn’t get in, because it was full of all those kids in school uniforms and the lady in the red jacket. But Doug was on top of his game now.
    “We’ll take the stairs,” he announced, walking over to the other end of the lobby. The lock guy followed him. I did not. I finally got a clue, pulled out my brand-new throwaway cell phone, and called in the marines.

4
    “O H FOR GOD’S SAKE,” SAID L UCY, ALL ANNOYED, AS SOON AS I reached her. “Where have you been?”
    “They cut off the phone,” I told her.
    “No kidding. I tried calling you three hours ago and got the message that the phone was no longer in service,” she said. “Where have you been?”
    “I went out to get a cell phone—”
    “You’ve been out buying a cell phone for three hours?”
    “Well, I needed some other stuff too and—”
    “I thought you were broke, what are you using for money?”
    “Would you listen to me, Lucy? They’re here! At least one of them is here, and he’s trying to change the locks, he has a locksmith with him, and he says I have no rights and—”
    “Relax, I’m two blocks away, I’m taking care of it,” she told me.
    “What do you mean you’re two blocks away? I called you at work,” I said, all confused again.
    “And my assistant patched you through to my cell.”
    “So you’re on your way here? How did you know to come?”
    “Tina, when the phone got cut off, what did you think was going on?”
    “I don’t know, I thought I needed to get a cell phone.”
    “Well, I thought a little