“Are you fired?”

“I don’t know.”

Ceci Duran looked at me for a second, and then she did something I have never forgotten, which was that she got a pen and wrote a phone number on the back of a work order and handed it to me.

“That’s my cousin.

He does employment law out of Norwalk.

He’s not fancy.

If they hand you anything to sign, you say you’d like to take it home, and you call him before you sign it.”

I said, “Ceci, it’s a cleaning job.”