He’s curbside when I step out of the cab that evening.
          “My God, are you alright?”
          The other tenants have filled the landlord in on the afternoon’s drama: lights flashing, portly police officers and peach-cheeked paramedics tramping up and down the stairs.
          He escorts me into his apartment and settles me into a leaf-green corduroy chair. He presents me with a royal blue raw silk pillow on which to rest my throbbing hand. He serves shrimp dumplings and goblets of velvety Chenin Blanc. I admire the way the soft black hairs on his arm lay flat. The dumplings are tangy with cilantro and ginger.
          “I’m waiting on you hand and foot,” he announces, refilling my glass, building a fire.
          I lean toward the flames. Every sterile surface in the emergency room, even the hands of the surgeon, had been so cold.
          The room smells of burning wood and lemon oil and great aunts playing Canasta. Except for this one chair in front of the fireplace, the room seems arranged for storage rather than living, like a halfway house for chifforobes and ottomans and davenports and desks. He swerves through the narrow corridors of furniture, pivoting on the balls of his stockinged feet.
          “Here, I’ve brought you a brandy.”
          “Thank you, Howard.” I swallow another pain pill. I try not to stare at an ink spot on his bottom lip. I feel my bones soften. I am both fooled and not fooled by his chivalric gig, an impersonation abetted by the alcohol/Percocet mix. He fetches me another blanket. The throbbing in my hand recedes. I pluck three small white feathers from the pillow, their thorny stems protruding from the coarse weave of the silk.
          “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you,” he says. “Make sure you stay out of harm’s way.”
          I fight back a giggle.
          “Sleep here tonight,” he says. “In case you need anything.”
          His sheets are crisp, the shade of the palest yellow rose petals you can imagine – sheets from a Henry James novel.

          “What do you do?” I ask.
          He slept elsewhere, on one of the couches presumably. Now he stands watching me eat Eggs Benedict in his bed.
          “This,” he proclaims. “This is what I do,” his outstretched arms indicating the eight apartments, basement, and roof of his fiefdom.
          “Oh.”
          His lips tighten. “Quite an appetite,” he says.
          “I like eggs.”
          “I knew it.”

          My head is filled with brandy-soaked cotton and the eggs have settled like a wet rag in the bottom of my stomach. As I trudge past #3 the door swings open. A thin white arm and a blue hand emerge, beckon.
          The woman to whom the arm belongs is talking on the phone. She grabs my sleeve, tugs me toward the kitchen. She covers the mouthpiece.
          “You’re the new neighbor,” she says. “Sit.” Into the phone she says, “Hey, I’ve got to go. My neighbor stopped by – the one who got her finger whacked off in the window.” She shudders. “Bye-bye.” She has voluminous fluffy white hair.
          The kitchen’s aromas are gingerbread and melted candle wax. Two large pots boil and hiss on the stove. The windows are beaded with steam. She takes in the sorry sight of me and my blood-spattered, slept-in clothes and shakes her head, grabs a teakettle from the counter.
          “It’s only the tip,” I explain.
          “Pardon?”
          “Only the tip of my finger got caught in the window.”
          The woman steps toward the back of the apartment. “Alara! Company!”
          A fluffy-white-haired girl materializes, cracks open the window, and balances herself primly on the edge of one of the kitchen chairs.
          “This is Alara, she’s nine. I’m Annie. And you’re Frances. Tell us about yourself.”
          The word torment comes to mind. There are so many ways I feel not well. Fortunately, at just the moment it will become necessary to lie or confess or flee, the kettle begins to sing – a loud sweet pure tone – and Annie is moved to provide me the story of this splendid kettle and her blue hands and a not-so condensed history of batik and the politics of Indonesia. She serves me cup after cup of the most bitter tea and perfectly crisp wolf-shaped gingerbread cookies and all the while water spatters and sizzles on the stovetop. The girl, Alara, draws asterisks in the steamed windows.
          The kitchen clock chirps noon. “Oh my goodness, I’ve got to check my dye bath. Excuse me, will you, Frances?”
          My deliverance, I think. “I really should be going. I need to change my bandage and – “
          “Of course you do. I’m so glad you stopped by. This is a very friendly building. Nice people. With the exception of him down there.” She points toward Howard’s apartment. “Mr. Ratfink.”

          When I get upstairs there’s a note taped to my door. A soft pencil scrawl on the back of an electric company envelope. WHAT DO YOU DO?!!
          The moving boxes are stacked in squared towers. My father had the boxes delivered to the bungalow, along with packing tape and a jumbo black permanent marker. Message received: I wasn’t to be trusted with even the most mundane matters.
          But now I am happy I didn’t have to drive all over town and make do with a motley assortment of liquor and grocery store boxes, and I am especially happy at the sight of the box labeled BEDDING. I take the last Percocet from the hospital envelope, lay down on my bare mattress, and pull my purple velvet comforter over my head. When I wake it is four o’clock the next morning.

          “I’ve got a crab quiche in the oven.” He’s let a day and a half pass since breakfast in bed. “Why don’t you come down and join me?”
          He sets the table. We watch the quiche cool.
          “So how’s your finger?” His voice sing-songs.
          “They refer to it as a partial amputation.”
          The dark spot is still there on his lip. As he hands me the plate I realize it’s a beauty mark. He touches his lip, rubs his palm over his unshaved chin.
          His phone rings. His side of the conversation consists of the word “no” repeated six times in the same even tone. He hangs up and rubs his chin again. I am a slow eater. His face is whiskered, harried. He sips coffee from a blue metal camping cup. For a second I see him as a Confederate colonel, a few months after Pickett’s Charge, determined, yet pensive.
          “Can I get you anything?”
          “How about fixing the window?”
          “My window guy’s in the Virgin Islands.”
          “There’s only one window guy?”
          “Only one I trust. Most of these guys are villains.”
          “Still, I’d like to be able to open both windows. When I turn on the heat in there it smells like cat piss. That carpet is disgusting.”
          “Louis didn’t have a cat.”
          “Someone had a cat – many, many cats is my guess.”
          “You know I’m sorry this happened to you, right? But I can’t fix a problem unless I know there’s a problem. And Louis indicated that he never opened the window.”
          “Indicated? What did he use – signal flags?”
          “Look. Maybe I could cut a piece of wood to prop that top window in place – until my guy gets back.”
          “The interesting part of that sentence is the word maybe.”
          “You’ve got a sassy mouth, Frances.”
          Sassy?

          My Rio Grande spinning wheel dominates my front room. Smooth oak shelves hold my store of yarn, divided by color and then by weight. I am heavy on greens and worsted wools.
          For ten years I was designing or spinning or knitting – garments or swatches, trying out a new cable stitch, experimenting with an unfamiliar yarn blend. I worked at The Bee’s Knees Knitting Shop. I helped customers select yarn for their projects. I sat with my charges, guiding their fingers through increases and decreases and buttonholes and collars. I ran mitten workshops. I sold a half-dozen intarsia designs to a yarn company in Maine. Beatrice, the shop owner, inching toward retirement, promised she’d give me very easy terms. “My dear,” she said. “The most important thing is that the shop stays in good hands.”
          Now that I am finished unpacking, the room is hushed and inert as a museum exhibit; I can imagine tourists filing through, a security guard snapping his gum in the corner behind the rocking chair. Artisan’s Studio, United States, 2000.
         
          “Guess what I’ve got in the oven?” Howard asks.
          It’s a Gruyere soufflé. It’s sublime.

          I run into Annie a block from home. I’m swinging a small grocery bag in my good hand and she’s embracing a colossal laundry bag. She gives me a sizing up look.
          “Alara and I have been worried about you.”
          And here I’d been thinking of myself as Miss Valiant in the Face of Disaster, my clearheaded competence apparent at 40 paces.
          On the second floor landing Howard crouches at the not quite 90-degree corner. A thick wad of keys hang from his belt. He appears to be inspecting the floorboard. “Ladies.” He nods as we pass.
          “That one,” Annie says, when she stops at her door. “The Real Estate Baron of Ft. Greene. The Sheik of Vanderbilt Avenue.”
          “What do you mean?”
          “Pah! He thinks he’s riding the crest of the wave, a real gentrification genius.”
          “I don’t know one thing about real estate,” I say.
          “Well look at DeKalb. Suddenly awash in bistros for God’s sake. Maybe you haven’t noticed yet, but he’s practically filled this building with women, and the whole bunch of us just happen to work from home. He’s always sniffing around, either underfoot like today or making some half-assed repair.”
          “Is Alara’s school nearby?”
          “He doesn’t deserve this building, that’s for sure.”
          “Maybe he did something really good in a previous life.”
          “That one? You’re kidding, right?”
         
          Two bony fingertips tighten around my nipple like staple removers. “You’re not going to sue me?” The question mark is an afterthought.
          “I wouldn’t be suing you, I’d be suing your insurance company.”
          “Not that I’m concerned. You have no case.”
          “Then what are you talking about?”
          Howard presses his ear to my stomach as though listening for the answer. “I’m going to do something about that window this week,” he says without lifting his head. “It’s still very cold out, you know.”
          “Yes, well, fresh air doesn’t go out of season.”
          “Listen, Frances, I’ve only got two hands.”
          “Lucky you.”
          We both look at my injured hand. In its white bundle of gauze it is something set aside.
          “How long did Louis live in the apartment?”
          “Two years.”
          “And why’d he give it up?”
          “Left town? Graduate school? We’re not in touch.”

          Why do I sleep with Howard?
          Because it’s easier to sleep with him than to not.
          Why do I sleep with him?
          Because I won’t mistake him for anything he isn’t, i.e. loyal, trustworthy.
         
          Howard’s insurance company has not balked at paying the hospital bills and the charges for my ongoing hand clinic visits; I’ve been reimbursed for my out-of-pocket expenses. Which leaves only that dubious X-factor, pain and suffering, the domain of lawyers. After my recent experience – was it really only two months ago? – it’s not a realm I’m in a hurry to reenter.
          After the first ten minutes of the first meeting I stopped looking at their faces, smug with what they thought they knew about me. The one female attorney wore weapon-sharp pumps; she had pairs in taupe, black, and navy blue. One of the men wore heavy gold cuff links that thunked against the edge of the conference table when he rearranged his papers. I can’t remember which lawyer was mine and which one was Joachim’s, but Cuff Links had to be my father’s because he was in charge.
          Not that anyone asked, but I could never smoke dope and knit. One hit and pattern charts wobbled like op art. Days later I’d still struggle to keep a twelve-stitch repetition in my head. Joachim bought enough for his own mild-to-moderate use, and for his friends who sometimes gave him cash and sometimes didn’t, and his boss, Roy, who overlooked his chronic laziness and tardiness. And then one afternoon I looked up from my wheel and there were these people in our bungalow, friends of friends. If he ran some errands for them, did this and that, he’d be able to take the winter off from his fingers-freezing job harvesting shellfish for Roy – how he explained it to me. Joachim with the cold hands, Joachim who longed so for hibernation that he stumbled into a drug ring, into the final months of a years-long investigation.
          Joachim had no money for lawyers. That’s why he implicated me. To get my father and his legal cronies and his money involved. That conference room full of lawyers was exactly what Joachim had expected. And did he expect the rest? Did he picture himself in a federal prison waiting indefinitely for his chance to testify? (Surely he didn’t think my father would cover his bail?) Did he picture me, boxed up and exiled – “The best thing for everybody,” my father said.
          This – I extend my arms, indicating the apartment, Brooklyn, all my worldly goods – exactly everything and nothing – is my fresh start.

          Howard’s body looks to have been solid maybe ten years ago. He wears his softness well. His skin is pulled tight and white. After showering he slaps on handfuls of cocoa butter lotion; he greases his penis and scrotum with Vaseline. He’s sleek as a seal.
          Still naked, he irons his pants and shirt. (The local dry cleaners are crooks, he says.) He uses spray starch to ensure the sharpest creases.
          “I know you think I’m crazy,” he says.
          “What? I’m just watching you.”
          The creases, I know, are essential to his heroic persona. A hero holding the line against the infidels – contractors, assessors, inspectors, tenants.
          He looks up from his shirt. “Everything I do, I do for a reason.”
          “What are you now, a mafia don?”
          He slams the iron to the fabric.

          My upstairs neighbor plays the ukulele. According to the mailbox he is Hank Mallory, the only male tenant. I don’t recognize the tunes he plays – I know nothing much about the ukulele – but the music seems impossibly mournful. Or perhaps I hear it as mournful because his playing is punctuated by fits of feverish weeping. His ukulele-playing chair sits directly above my knitting chair, an old cherry rocker that first belonged to my mother’s mother. Though I am not knitting, it’s where I most often choose to sit. I would have thought that the uke wasn’t a suitable instrument for expressing grief, but plucked by Hank its voice is a vibrato keening that makes my ribs ache.

          On the lamp beside Howard’s bed a thick brown lampshade traps most of the light from a 40-watt bulb.
          “You know I’ve got another building, a few blocks over near Pratt.”
          “Really?”
          “Well, I’ve got a partner. I’d like to buy him out – he’d double-cross me in a second if I gave him the chance – but I’ve got to sit tight right now. I’ve got my eye on some sweet properties.” He grabs my arm. “Am I boring you?”
          “No.”
          “Know this, Frances, I’m ready to act when the time is right.”
          He fucks like he walks, with a heavy lumbering grace. With each thrust he gains momentum. I must fuck back or be buried.

          I like my apartment. This apartment is what I have now. The building contains me, holds my shape.
          Here’s the thing: I don’t have a copy of my lease.
          The lease: a fingers-crossed promise waiting to be broken. The Tenant agrees to pay through the nose and anus and abide by any and all house rules whether promulgated before or after the execution in a workmanlike manner during occupancy thereof until either party shall terminate the same without prior consent at reasonable and regular intervals for any illegal purpose and other pests at the initiation of the tenancy. The lease is a slipknot or not.
          Still, it’s something, a thing to be had.
          The day before I moved in, the day before the window accident, I sat at Howard’s kitchen table, drank a cup of coffee, and signed the lease, watched him sign. He told me he would make copies the following day at the drugstore around the corner. It is a two-year lease.
          I ask Howard about the lease.
          He feeds me a strawberry, slides the cool red fruit between my lips. “What are you worried about, sweetheart?”
          My father would not have handed over the check without the copy of the lease. Am I as incompetent as he believes I am?

          “Kira and Jean and I are having a pot of tea. Why don’t you come down?” Annie asks.
          Alara peeks past me into the apartment. “Is all that yarn yours?”
          “I was just about to take a nap. It’s really not a good time. Thanks for thinking of me..”
          Alara leans further into the room. “And a spinning wheel. Cool. What’s it all for?”
          “Kira’s one of the best tattoo artists in the city and Jean’s a potter. They’re really eager to meet you.”
          “Another time.”
          “You’re doing okay up here? Really?”
          “I’m doing well.” Alara is tugging at my sleeve. “It’s for knitting. I’m a knitter.”
          “Will you teach me how ?” Alara asks.
          “Alara, let’s head back before the tea gets cold.”
          “I can’t knit right now,” I say, waving my thickly bandaged hand.
          “You don’t have to be able to knit to teach me, do you?”
          I listen to their steps on the stairs, the click of their apartment door closing. I can almost hear the women laughing, their teaspoons clinking in their cups. The building is like an unopened parcel waiting on the table.

          While we sleep the building settles another quarter inch on the starboard side. My door sticks and I bruise my shoulder shoving it open. He kisses the bruise tenderly. He shaves down the door. He demonstrates. “See? Open. Close. Open.” And it’s true – the door swings easily on its hinges. Neither of us mentions the finger’s breadth gap between door and floor. In a fit of generosity he installs mini-blinds in the two skinny windows in the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom; they are too narrow by an inch and their hold in the wall is as sturdy as a loose tooth.

          My walls are weeping. I pull my shelves of yarn away from the wall, revealing elaborate gray-green plumes of mildew.
          I vacuum the rug, I attack it with a stiff bristled scrub brush, but the problem is subsurface. The animal hair has been ground into the fibers. Crossing the room in my bare feet is like walking across the back of a large furred beast.
          Even as I start the project I know it’s folly. This isn’t a one-handed job and my only tool is the utility knife my father included in my moving kit. I yank up a corner from the tacks, then begin hacking the carpet into six-inch strips, sawing through the grisly layer of backing, working backwards across the room. The painted white wood beneath the carpet spurs me on. After two strips my bandage is gray and dotted with blood. The blade has dulled. My hand hurts and my throat burns and my nose runs but I don’t stop. Even when I finish eight hours later I’m not done because I still have to get the whole stinking mess downstairs. I roll the strips as tightly as I can and bind them with twine. I gather an armful of bundles and head down. Hank is playing a somewhat happier tune and as I’m about to pass Howard’s apartment I think perfect and dump the bundles on his doormat and head up for the rest, but when I reach my door I can only bang my head against it in frustration. Locked out, but how? The door has never locked automatically.
          I wait for Howard on the landing above his apartment. It sounds like a polka, what Hank is playing tonight. The hallway smells of bacon and sautéed garlic and PineSol. From above and below I hear cupboards and refrigerator doors being shut and chairs pushed in and pulled out from the dinner table. I can almost hear the clatter of fork to plate. Dishwater whooshes through the pipes.

          My mother died when I was five. My father, Mr. What’s-Done-Is-Done, including the death of a spouse, rarely spoke of her. And now it’s me he’s done with. “Consider this bridge burned,” he said, handing me an envelope containing a plane ticket and a sizeable cashier’s check. For family I am left with a spinster great aunt, Aunt Helen. She was the one who told me my mother knitted. Aunt Helen and I bellow at each other during our first Sunday of every month calls. I have kept her in turtlenecks and cardigans since I was a teenager. A veteran of fifty St. Paul winters, she appreciates the virtues of woolens. It is best when we are matched with people who appreciate our gifts.
          “Your father tells me you’ve had some troubles,” she opened our last conversation.
          “What did he – “
          “You know what I’ve always said, Frances. There are no troubles that can’t be walked away. Look at Gandhi, look at Jesus, Eleanor Roosevelt!”
          “Eleanor Roosevelt was a walker?”
          “Absolutely. It’s my very best advice. Are you working?”
          “I’ve hurt my finger. I’m not sure – “
          “Well I’m glad you’re alright, dear. And don’t forget about the walking. Love you.” Click.
          And so I walk. Most often I head straight up Vanderbilt, which leads me straight out of our little bit of downtroddeness and through the wee pocket of bistro-mad gentrification Annie spoke of, past a lovely yellow saltbox house, the French-speaking Baptist church, a shabby pharmacy, Our Queen of All Saints, a florist with dusty plastic flowers in the window, numerous bodegas and service stations and car services and coffee shops, until without quite noticing how I got there I reach the bustling climax of Grand Army Plaza.

          “Hey, guess what?” Howard asks. “I got a deal on some of those fancy water-saving shower nozzles. I could run up later and install it.”
          Our game continues: legitimate landlord business is the only occasion for which I admit Howard into my apartment.
          Howard brews a fine pot of coffee. His half and half is absolutely fresh. He has almond-orange biscotti for me to nibble on as I wait for my eggs.
          “It isn’t something I could do on my own?” I ask.
          “Well, I was thinking of your hand and all.”
          “Since when?”
          “I would have helped you with the carpet.”
          “You denied it even needed cleaning!”
          “But I said it was fine with me if you wanted to remove it.”
          “And where in that was your offer of assistance?”
          “It was implied.”
          “Anyway, you’ve helped enough for one week – changing that doohickey on my lock.”
          “I told you I was sorry.”
          “Fine. Have you had a chance to make a copy of my lease?”
          “I thought I gave you that.”
          He hands me a plate: toast, dry and fried eggs, broken, golden yolk smeared across the whites.

          The paramedics said I was lucky the window didn’t catch my whole hand. The first doc who examined me at Bellevue said I was lucky the paramedics hadn’t dropped me off at Brooklyn Hospital, where for sure they’d have amputated at the knuckle. And everyone at the hospital said how lucky I was to have “Lizzie.” Dr. Elizabeth Gardner headed the team of three hand surgeons who were summoned to the emergency room on my behalf. She began by repairing the nail bed. This alone took almost an hour and a half. Three times she removed a stitch, a 1/16” em-dash of gut, that she judged imperfect. Both then and now (regardless of whether my fingernail grows back, regardless of luck) I experience her fierce and substantial attention as love.

          I’ve been knitting in my sleep. I awaken in the dark with my hands in the air. Some mornings my wrists ache.
          Howard is mincing garlic and I am searching his desk drawers.
          “Frances,” he calls from the kitchen. “You like Portobellos don’t you?” The second drawer squeaks open.
          “Love them,” I holler back. The drawers are a hodgepodge of envelopes, marbles, rubber bands, coins, subway tokens, a pair of glasses with severely scratched lenses, dirty pink erasers – the debris of an adolescent boy. Why am I disappointed? Was I expecting a contract with the devil? Evidence of some nefarious dealings with Louis? I head over to the metal desk with a file drawer. How about a simple file folder labeled Tenant Leases? I look under T and L and under my name, first and last, and of course there’s nothing incriminating but nothing lease-like either.
          “It’s getting lonely back here!” His voice is closer with each word. I ease the drawer shut.

          Alara is sitting with her back against my door. A schoolbook is open on her plaid-skirted lap.
          “I think it’s time to start my knitting lessons.”
          I can’t think of what to say.
          “I could come in the afternoons after school.”
          “Did your mom send you up here?”
          “No she did not.”
          “Why do you want to learn how to knit?”
          “I like the smell of wet mittens.”

          He’s stabbing at a block of frozen hash browns in a cast iron skillet.
          “I’m your first friend in New York,” Howard boasts.
          “I suppose.” What a coup, I think, I’m intimate with the only man in the city who has keys to my apartment.
          He ceases his attack, looks at me. “What does that mean? I’m not your friend?”
          “Goose,” I say. “You’re more than a friend.”

          Alara rummages through my knitting supplies. She likes reading the names of the yarn colors aloud: lamb’s ear, sweet butter, appassionato, cactus flower, cricket. She covets my antique stitch counter, a jar filled with hand-carved tagua buttons from Ecuador.
          As she sits down for her first lesson Hank begins a ukulele lament. Alara rolls her eyes.
          “I feel kind of sorry for him, don’t you?” I ask.
          “I don’t like feeling sorry for people.” She gives me a sharp glance, as though I am about to do something pitiful. I try to block Hank out. I teach Alara the rhyme a Waldorf teacher taught me to help students remember the movements required to make a knit stitch: in through the front door, run around the back, out through the window, and off jumps Jack.
          The rhyme pleases her. We speak no more of Hank.
          “This is easy,” Alara says.
          “We’ll do purl tomorrow.”
          “Purl’s harder?”
          “It is.”
          “Excellent.”

          And I continue to sleep with him because?
          Wrapped in a yellow bath sheet, handing me a plate of eggs scrambled with cream cheese and chives, he is held in abeyance – the landlord suspended like an insect in amber where he can do no harm.
          He can’t intrude on my loneliness: there are no doors there.
          When he draws down the shades he distills himself. In the dim light, between his smooth sheets, he is nothing but fingers and eyes and penis and pleasure.
          None of these reasons is more important than the others.
          I have two trunks filled with unfinished garments. I finger the ribbed back of a pale green chenille jacket, the nubby sleeves of a seed stitched baby romper. I can’t remember working on them, though I can see what would have attracted me to the projects. The green of the mohair yarn glows like a celadon glaze. Did the baby (whose baby?) grow too big for the romper? Those projects belong to Before. As in Before everything blew up I’d planned for my next project to be a sweater for Joachim. In the two birthdays we were together I gave him a red scarf and a deep maroon vest, edged in gold. He lost the scarf within a week, but he loved the vest. Casting the wrapping paper aside he announced, “I’ll try it on,” and when he pranced back into the kitchen area a few minutes later he was wearing nothing but the vest. He marched around our bungalow grinning. A happy, nearly naked man. He said he thought the vest made him look intelligent. File this under Exhibit A: Evidence of Domestic Bliss.
          It was going to be a slipstitch pullover in shades of rich brown and creamy oatmeal knit in a three-strand Merino. Chest at underarm: 45-1/2". Length from shoulder: 26". Cast on 111 stitches to begin the back.

          “Do you mind if I hang out in front of the fire?” I ask. “This chair is so cozy.”
          “I suppose,” he says. “It’s almost ready though.”
          All this furniture and so many cubbies and drawers. Begrudging drawers that long to screech and drawers with dull brass handles prone to clatter. Several are locked. I discover years of bank statements, two copies of his birth certificate (Mother, Dorothy, Father, Not Named) filed in separate files, clippings on investment strategies, receipts and coupons – haircuts to windshield repair.
          If it’s in one of the locked drawers I’ll have to find the key. If the key is on his key ring I’ll have to incapacitate him because he never lets his keys out of sight. He doesn’t like having me out of sight either. Several times he’s nearly caught me. “I dropped my ring,” I say, kneeling in front of the roll-top desk.
          Have I missed something? I return to the metal desk with the two locked drawers. I look again in the top drawer, overfilled with pens and pencils and binder clips.
          “C’mon Frances. This frittata is piping!”
          “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Blood taps in the veins at my neck and temple. But hey, what’s this tucked beneath the faded, doodled-on blotter? My lease.

          I feel foolishly relieved. The lease is scant protection, outlining an uneven division of power. I’ve heard the stories. The lessee has the power to deface, to annoy, to vacate without notice, to foster tenant unrest, but the landlord can schedule an aria-singing window washing crew to start with your bedroom windows at 8 a.m. The landlord can hire a team of ill-mannered, tobacco-chewing thugs to replaster the ceilings. Tenant’s organizations publish flyers advertising the renter’s legal rights, but even they admit there are no ordinances that protect the tenant from the landlord’s misery, miserliness, and mendacity.
          I’ve hidden and rehidden the lease. For the moment it is guarded by a battalion of shoes, a neat paper roll tucked inside a pair of high black boots. The phone rings twenty rings at a time.

          Howard stands at the top of the ladder on the second story landing like a broken marionette, the globe of the light fixture shattered on the floor beneath him. I remind myself not to mistake ineptitude for guilelessness. The glass shimmers like crushed seashells. He steps down hard. Crunch. Crunch. He grinds his work boots into the glass.
          “I’ve tried calling you.”
          There’s no way to know for sure if he knows I’ve got the lease.
          “Have you been away?”
          I wave my good hand vaguely. “Can I give you a hand?” I ask.
          “You’ll be home later,” he says.

          My wrists ache as I flip through my knitting binders, looking for an easy but not too easy pattern for Alara’s first project.
          Afternoons the sun streams through the back windows. The room is stark. Just a few boxes full of clothes that wouldn’t fit in the closets. I don’t have a dresser yet. From the bed I can see the paint of the windowsills puckered with moisture. I see the spatter of blood on the wall from when I first turned away from the window, a constellation of seven tiny drops. My bandage is much less bulky now. The finger still looks raw, but I can imagine its being healed. Six months, they tell me, before it will be what it will be. It only hurts badly if I bump it into something. The very tip burns in the cold.
          The light shifts and I turn toward the window – Howard’s hovering on the fire escape.
          “What are you doing?” I shout.
          He scowls and makes an undecipherable hand signal and clambers to the roof, as though I’d interrupted some legitimate business.

          I burp eggs. “So is there a problem with the roof?”
          He’s got his back to me, rinsing off our lunch dishes in the sink.
          “That roof is guaranteed for another eighteen years. I thought I might have left something up there.”
          He pauses, as if this isn't too absurd to refute.
          He wipes down the counter. “This building is tight as a drum.”

          When I leave my apartment I stick a tiny piece of yarn in the door. I’ve mapped the exact placement of my throw rugs. There is never evidence of intrusion. And it never feels as though he’s been there. So either Howard is very clever or I am ridiculous. Or he is clever and I am ridiculous, whether or not he’s serreptiously entering my apartment. There are worse things to be.

          “You’ve got to relax, Alara. You’ve got a death grip on that yarn.” Unlike most beginners she doesn’t drop stitches, but her practice swatches are as dense and impenetrable as a knight’s chain mail. This is what I trust – the durability of the stockinette stitch.
          “I want to make something,” she insists.
          The bamboo needles click.
          “Soon, I promise.” She’s absolutely adorable in the rocker, all that fluffy blonde hair, a smooth ball of scarlet yarn in her green velvet lap.
          Alara mutters something.
          “What?”
          “You’re staring at me.”
          “Sorry.”
          “Listen,” Alara says awhile later.
          “To what?”
          “The building. It’s vibrating.”
          There is something, a hum that could be the composite buzz of sewing machine, tattoo needle, an electric pottery wheel, the sound of things being made.
          “Do you hear it?” she demands.
          “Yes, I hear it.”
          Alara frowns.
          “I do.” Of course I do.

          “So this is it.” Howard is delighted I have at last allowed him into my bed. He affectionately fingers a worn spot on my comforter. I feed him slivers of avocado, stroke his shoulder.
          “It’s nice. Being here,” Howard says. He traces a vein up the inside of my arm. He sighs.
          I hesitate. His eyes are silver-gray slits, shiny as paper clips.
          I mount his mound of flesh. Sitting astride him I grab his wrist with my damaged hand and press his dry, hot palm to the damp wall. Disappointment: I had hoped for a puff of steam.
          “What?” He blinks. He struggles to move his hand. I tighten my hold, gripping his wrist with both hands now.
          “Do you feel that?” I ask.
          His erection withers inside me.
          “Yes,” he replies.
          “What do you feel?”
          “The wall is wet.”
          “You admit it. You admit your perfidy.”
          “Yes.”
          I get up and put on my robe. He pulls on his pants.
          “I can make things difficult for you,” he says.
          “Yes,” I agree.

          I pick up after fifteen rings. "Hey, I'm sorry about last week," he says, "on the fire escape, startling you."
          Is he waiting for a reciprocal apology?
          “I just wanted to see – “
          “What?” I’m honestly curious.
          “Listen, Frances. Don’t think you can have any secrets from me.”
          “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
          “Because you can’t. I know what goes on in my building.”
          “Howard, please.” What do I want to ask him for? Reasonableness? Release?

          Howard begins leaving things at my door. A box of kitchen matches. A jar of cumin. A caved-in overripe strawberry on a chipped white saucer.
          Are these threats?
          I return the favor. A stale corn muffin. A candle stub with the wick broken off. A polished avocado pit.
          Is this an argument?

          I’m eyeing a tall dresser my neighbor, Perley, is selling. “It’s an antique,” he says from the stoop.
          It's a scarred but solid piece with all its Depression glass knobs intact.
          “Would you bring it up for me later?”
          Perley considers, takes a long draw off his can of malt liquor. “Nope. Don’t think so.”
          I don’t hear Annie until she drops her grocery bag at my feet. “Perley, you giving my friend a hard time?”
          “No ma’am. She’s getting a fair price. It’s my back, keeps me from lifting.”
          Annie raises an eyebrow.
          “I’d buy it,” I explain, “if I could get it upstairs.”
          “Is that all?” Annie runs her finger over a deep scratch on the dresser top. “I’ll fetch Hank. He can bring it up for you.”
          “Well then,” Perley says.
          When Annie reemerges from the building she’s collected Hank and Alara.
          Annie starts pulling out the dresser drawers.
          “Y’all go up first,” Hank says. “In case I drop it.”
          But he manages just fine, not even a scrape against the railing.
          “Set it down anywhere,” I say.
          “You don’t have much stuff,” Annie observes.
          “We’ve got too much stuff,” Alara says.
          “Most people do.” Hank has moved back near the doorway, as though he’s afraid of intruding. He wipes his forehead with his sleeve.
          “I really needed this dresser. Thank you all very much.”
          We hear heavy footsteps on the stairs a flight below.
          Hank nudges the door closed with his foot.
          We go silent. The four of us frozen like statues in a child’s game.
          The landlord’s assertive knocking. “Frances, it’s me. Frances. Are you there? I know you’re there.” We hear his sigh. “C’mon Frances. Perley told me you just bought a dresser.”
          His footsteps recede and a moment later the game is over. Annie and Alara and Hank excuse themselves. I repeat my thanks but fail to offer water, coffee, chairs, something. I was confused by Howard’s saying my name, his voice both confident and plaintive.

          I hear a scuffling outside my door. Howard’s bulging vein-streaked eye meets mine in the peephole. I stuff an old Indian blanket into the crack beneath the door. I am preposterous! I can’t stop myself from dragging my trunk across the room. I’m humming as I shove it hard against the door.

          I almost trip over his latest offering – five sterling silver buttons scattered at my doorstep like jacks. The buttons are the size of quarters, each curved face etched with a fleur-de-lis. I imagine a sweater for them, a cardigan knit from a fine-gauge wool-silk blend the blue-black of damson plums.
          I leave him a can of WD-40 and a handsome wooden carpenter’s level. The poison-green bubble drifts to the left.

          My rocker is just the right size for Alara because when she sits forward her feet can rest on the floor.
          “You were born to knit,” I tell her. She’s nearly finished with the front left panel of her vest. Her stitches are smooth and orderly. Her armhole decreases are perfect puckers. I couldn’t do better.
          “My mom says you’re tightlipped.”
          “What do you think?”
          She flips her knitting over to the purl side. “You do spend a lot of time alone.”
          “Yes, well, I’ll have to get a job soon, and then I’ll be around people all day.”
          “Don’t you like people?”
          “I like you.”
          She scowls.
          “I used to like people.”
          “What about now?”
          I shrug.
          “Frances.”
          “I don’t know.”
          This she accepts, or seems to, blazing through another 56 stitches without comment. And then she speaks only to ask me to pass the measuring tape.

          He calls. “I’m thinking blintzes.”
          “You’re branching out.”
          “Yes.” He laughs. “It’s true!”
          Is this a truce?
          I might as well decide it is.
          And if it isn’t?
          I’ll pile all my furniture in front of the door and rappel in and out my kitchen window. I’ll spread broken glass on the steps of the fire escape and grease the railings. I’ll sleep with a butcher’s knife stuck between my mattress and box spring if I have to.
          I’m not going anywhere.