It terrifies me, just the feel of it. Light and deadly. “Take it back. Get it away from me.” I hand it to him, but he pushes it back at me. I feel panicky. “Marv, take it back! It’s gonna go off!”

He takes it back, with a chuckle. “Can’t go off. It’s got a safety.” He slips it into his pocket as if it were loose change.

“Marv, why do you have that thing?”

“You think you can run a cash business in this city without a gun? Besides, it’s my right. It says it in the United States Constitution. I have the right to bear arms.”

“Don’t tell me what the Constitution says. The Constitution is talking about the need for an army. It’s so the army can have the guns, Marv, not guys who sell plants. You’ll get yourself hurt with that thing.”

“Oh please.”

“You will. I read that. They’ll take it from you and use it against you.”

“You sure you don’t want to borrow it for just one night? If you need to shoot it, you just take the safety off and hold it with two hands, like onCharlie’s Angels. Like this.” He makes a Luger with his fingers.

“No, thanks.”

“Sure?”

“I couldn’t use it anyway. I couldn’t shoot anybody. Now I’m going to bed.”

“Yes, you could. If you had to. If somebody was trying to kill you, you sure as hell could.”

“See you, Marv.”

His thin voice calls after me. “Don’t kid yourself, Mary. You’d use it. Every one of us would. Don’t kid yourself.”

I leave him standing there in the yellow square of light spilling out from my window. A hustler with a toy-sized gun in the pocket of his chinos.

Iget inside my apartment and check everywhere for notes, for damage, for something missing. For any kind of sign that someone has been here. I find nothing.

I try my best to feel at home. I go around and touch all of my things, rechristening them. I clean up the bedroom. I open a can of Progresso soup. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that something is different about the place. I settle down on the living room floor to figure out the directions for the answering machine, but I can’t concentrate.

Alice comes over and sniffs the open box. She saw the whole thing. “Did I leave the door open, Alice?”

She ignores me and walks away.

“You can be replaced!” I shout after her.

I sit in the middle of my floor with a mug of lentil soup and look around my empty apartment. I feel edgy and decide to call Judy. She thinks the whole thing is as creepy as I do but convinces me that I left the door unlocked. Everybody makes mistakes, she says, even you. Then she gets worked up about Marv’s gun; it takes me ten minutes to persuade her that I wouldn’t think of buying one. I hook up the machine and begin screening the calls after that. I pick up when I hear Ned’s voice.

“Hey, Mary. I didn’t know you had an answering machine.”

“It’s new.”

“You going to use it instead of star sixty-nine?”

“Until my number gets changed.”

“I like it, it’s cute. You sound like a kid.”

“Great. I wanted to sound like a hit man. Hit woman.”

He laughs. “Not on your life. So how are you doing? You’ve been burning up the phone lines.”

“Don’t ask.”

“Anything the matter?”

“Yes, but I’m too tired to talk about it.”

“Just give me the headline.”

“I thought a car was following me, but it wasn’t. I thought someone broke into my apartment, but they didn’t. Not a good day.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. Now I’m tired. I was just about to go to sleep.”

“I should let you go then.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. I’m supposed to tell you. Your father sends his regards.”

“My fatherwhat? ”

“I was at Masterson. He introduced himself.”

“To you? Why?” Ned sounds concerned, almost frightened.

“I don’t know. He said he wanted to meet me. I guess you told him that we-”

“I haven’t spoken to my father in fifteen years, Mary.”

“You haven’t? Why not?”

“It’s a long story. I’d rather not talk about it over the phone. Can I stop by your office tomorrow?”

I offer a tentative okay and we hang up. None of this makes sense. Why would a grown man sound frightened of his father? Why haven’t they spoken in a decade and a half? How does his father know anything about me? I have so many questions lately, and no answers at all. I don’t like this feeling, that everything’s slipping out of control. I kept it together after Mike died, and it wasn’t easy. Now it’s all under attack. Threatened at the foundation.

I close the living room blinds and check the dead bolt. I decide to take a hot bubble bath to calm down. I push theANSWER CALL button on the answering machine and fill the tub. I undress quickly, throwing my clothes into a heap on the bathroom floor. I sink deep into the warm, scented water, artificially blue in imitation of the Caribbean. The box promised that the sapphire currents would wash my troubles away. Don’t worry, be happy. I lie still in the tub, listening for any sound in the apartment. The only noise is the crackling of the bubbles as they pop at my earlobes. I try to enjoy high tide, but as soon as I start, the telephone rings. I stiffen and wait for the machine to answer.

The rings stop, and there’s a mechanical noise as the tape machine engages. “Mary, this is Timothy Jameson. See me first thing in the morning. You know when I get in.”Click.

At least it’s nothim.

I relax in the warm, silky water. It feels good, therapeutic. I sink deeper, so the waves lap at my chin. I close my eyes. No problem, mon.

The next time I hear the telephone ring, the water is cool. Barely conscious, I hear the answering machine pick up the call. A woman’s voice says, too loudly, “This is Stephanie Fraser. We met in Judge Bitterman’s courtroom after your argument. I’ve been calling your office, but you haven’t returned my calls. We just can’t sweep this under the rug, Mary. We need to send a message. So please return my call. I know you must be busy, but this is important. Thank you.”

Click.

“Go away, Steph. I gave at the office.”

But now the water is cold, and I’m awake. How unpleasant. And I have to shave my legs, a task that used to make me feel grown-up but now is merely a pain in the ass. Cranky, I fish under the water for the Dove and soap up the stubble on my legs. I use a new plastic razor, for that extra-close shave. This way I can let it go for three more days. I’m negotiating my ankle bone with concentration when the telephone rings again.

The rings stop and the machine engages.

Silence. No message. No static. It’shim.

Click.

I feel a sharp pinch at my ankle. A crimson seam crosses the bone. The soap makes it burn.

“Shit!”

I hurl the razor against the tile wall, and it falls to the floor.

That’s when I see it: Mike’s picture, the little one of his face, in a porcelain heart frame. The only picture of him I haven’t packed away. I keep it on my makeup shelf in the bathroom. It’s a private place that only I can see, every morning.

But it’s not on the makeup shelf tonight. It’s on the floor. Shattered.

“No!” I climb out of the bathtub and pick up the frame. It lies in pieces in my hand as I stand dripping on the tile floor. The porcelain has cracked into separate shards, and the glass over Mike’s face is a network of tiny slivers.

How did this happen? I don’t want to think what I’m thinking.

I check the makeup shelf frantically. A tube of Lancôme foundation. A glass of eye pencils and mascara. A couple of lipsticks and a bottle of contact lens solution. None of the makeup has been disturbed. If it was Alice who knocked over the picture frame, she was pretty choosy.

I look down at my hand. I can’t see Mike at all. It’s as if a storm cloud has passed over his features.

If someone is trying to hurt me, they sure know how to do it.