It had that quality that later, in the retelling, would sound like foreshadowing, and at the time was only a tired woman trying one last small thing.

The cab cost nineteen dollars.

She tipped five, which she noticed herself doing, because she had become the kind of person who noticed nineteen dollars.

The building was a prewar six-flat on a street of prewar six-flats, red brick, deep window wells, the good kind of ugly.

Her great-aunt Rosalie had bought unit 2B in 1974 for what a used car costs now, and had left it to Maya outright in a will so short the attorney had apologized for how little there was to read.

Maya took the stairs to the second floor the way Dr.