Mr. Contreras shook her hand, blinking at her like an owl with a flashlight in its face. “Pleased to meet you,” he said automatically if unenthusiastically. “Look, doll, you oughta get this lady-your aunt, you say?-you oughta get her up to bed. She ain’t doing too great.”

The sour yeast smell had swept over him too. “Yep, that’s just what I’ll do. Come on, Elena, Let’s get upstairs. Beddy-bye time.”

Mr. Contreras headed back to his apartment. The dog was annoyed-if we were all having a party she wanted to join in.

“That wasn’t very polite of him,” Elena sniffed as Mr. Contreras’s door closed behind us. “Didn’t even tell me his own name when I went out of my way to introduce myself.”

She grumbled all the way up the stairs. I didn’t say anything, just kept a hand in the small of her back to propel her in the right direction, urging her on when she tried to stop for a breather at the second-floor landing.

Back in my apartment she wanted to ooh and aah over all my possessions. I ignored her and moved the coffee table so I could pull the bed out of the couch. I made it up and showed her where the bathroom was.

“Now listen, Elena. You are not staying here more that one night. Don’t even think I’m going to waffle on this because I won’t.”

“Sure, baby, sure. What happened to your ma’s piano? You sell it or something to buy this sweet little grand?”

“No,” I said shortly. My mother’s piano had been destroyed in the fire that gutted my own apartment three years earlier. “And don’t think you can make me forget what I’m saying by raving over the piano. I’m going back to bed. You can sleep or not as you please, but in the morning you’re going someplace else.”

“Oh, don’t look so ugly, Vicki. Victoria, I mean. It’ll ruin your complexion if you frown like that. And where else am I supposed to turn in the middle of the night if not to my own flesh and blood?”