Molly stopped the stroller by her mailbox in the lobby the next morning and glanced out through the rectangle of glass in the street door. Early as it was, the sun was glaring on West Eighty-fifth Street.
“Go!” Michael exhorted from his seat in the stroller. “Let’s go!”
“Ease up,” Molly told him with a smile.
“Wanna walk,” he said.
She didn’t pay much attention to him; he hadn’t used his no-compromise voice that might lead to a show of temper.
Michael was getting too big for the stroller, and she dreaded when she’d have to walk with him to Small Business. He was still young enough to be subject to sudden impulses and outbursts of speed, taking adults unaware, and there was so much danger to run toward in Manhattan.
“Walk next year, maybe,” she told him, and unlocked and opened the brass door of the mailbox.
She leafed through the mail. Nothing but junk and a postcard from a friend who was traveling in South Dakota. The card featured a color photograph of Mount Rushmore. Molly couldn’t look at Mount Rushmore without thinking of the Hitchcock movie North by Northwest. Average people suddenly pulled into dangerous situations through no fault of their own was a recurring theme in Hitchcock movies. Molly was glad it didn’t happen that often in real life.
She closed and locked the mailbox door and turned around.
Gasped and dropped the mail.
Deirdre was standing in the lobby, smiling at her.
She was wearing jeans and a faded red T-shirt and had on brown cotton gloves, the kind sold in hardware stores for working in gardens.
“This must be Michael!” she said, and bent down and touched his cheek with a brown cloth glove finger. “He really does look like David!”
“What are you doing here?” Molly asked.
Deirdre picked up the mail while she was bent over to be on Michael’s level, then straightened up and handed it to Molly.
“Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Molly stood holding the mail, staring at her, puzzled and not at all liking her presence so close to home. “If you’ve come to see David…”
“Oh, no, that’s not it,” Deirdre said. “The fact is, the darnedest thing has happened.”
“Darnedest thing?”
“Yes. David might have told you, I’ve been having some trouble finding a decent apartment. Well, a real estate agency recommended an apartment in this building, on the fourth floor. I looked at it and loved it. It was perfect! It wasn’t until I’d signed the lease this morning and started moving in what little stuff I have that I noticed the name ‘Jones’ on one of the mailboxes, just saw it out of the edge of my vision. Such a common name, though, I figured it couldn’t be my Joneses. But one of the neighbors said yes, David and Molly Jones! It’s a tiny world, isn’t it?”
Molly was thunderstruck. Her mind couldn’t grab on to what she’d heard. “You mean you’re moving into this building? Here?”
“Sure am. Right this very moment. Craig’s helping me.”
The street door opened, letting in a wave of warm air and Craig Chumley. He was wearing a blue workshirt and paint-spattered jeans, clumsily backing into the lobby carrying a large cardboard box that had once held cartons of Cheerios.
Still smiling, Deirdre said, “Oh, Molly, this is Craig.”
Chumley grinned; his teeth looked yellow in the lobby light, the long bicuspids lending him an amiable but wolflike expression. “Hi, Molly. Sorry I couldn’t make it to dinner the other night.”
Molly ignored him completely, still staring at Deirdre. “Here?” she asked again in disbelief.
“Yes, we’re neighbors! I didn’t plan it this way, but when I found out, after having met you, I didn’t see any problem. At least not enough of a problem to try breaking my lease. Even if that was possible. Which of course it isn’t.”
“Whatever’s in this box,” Chumley said, “it’s getting heavier by the nanosecond.”
Deirdre laughed. “Oh, sorry!”
She hurried to the elevator and pressed the Up button. The elevator was still at lobby level from Molly and Michael’s descent, and the door opened immediately. She entered, and Chumley carried the box in and stood beside her. He didn’t put the box down but continued holding it in front of him. Molly could just see his paint-spattered jeans and the top of his balding head.
“Bye for now, neighbor!” Deirdre said as the door slid shut.
Molly stood motionless, gripping her mail hard enough to kink the postcard from South Dakota.
“Wanna walk,” Michael demanded from the stroller.
David sat at his desk at Sterling Morganson, pressing the cool plastic phone to his ear and staring at the letter he’d been composing on his computer monitor. It was a reply to a fee client in Idaho who’d inquired about a special rate if, instead of one novel, two were submitted for appraisal and possible marketing. The glowing screen seemed to recede, the letters merging to form wavering white lines on the deep blue background.
“What?” he asked, his voice incredulous. “You’re sure about this? She’s moving in now?”
He listened intently to Molly for several seconds. A part of his mind was grasping the true import of what she was saying; something fundamental and problematic had happened, and his life was changed. His heart got colder and heavier with every word she spoke. He didn’t see Lisa pause in the doorway and stand watching him.
“I’ll talk to her,” he said at last. “But it won’t help. She has a right to live where she wants, and if she signed a lease there might not be much she could do to get out of it even if she tried. Just like we can’t get out of our lease.”
His face became paler as he listened.
“Dammit, Mol, I don’t like it any more than you do but-”
Another pause. He adjusted the receiver so it wouldn’t hurt his ear.
“But I don’t know what to do,” he said. “We’ve got a situation here. Have you got any ideas? Mol? Molly?”
Lisa moved back into the hall and hurried away as he slammed down the receiver.
He sat quietly for a moment, his mind lurching in numbed shock as it struggled to assess the perils and possibilities in what he’d just heard.
Then he picked up a bound manuscript from his desk and hurled it against a wall.
The noise must have attracted Josh, who looked into the office holding a half-full glass coffeepot. His gaze panned the office, took in the manuscript on the floor, then fastened on David.
“Want some coffee, boss?”
David sat hunched over his desk, his face buried in his hands.
“No,” he said between splayed fingers. “Not unless it contains strychnine.”
“You’re in luck,” Josh said, and entered the office.