With a shudder I moved hastily to the back of the apartment. Unfortunately her pathos couldn’t quell my anger at having her with me. Thanks to her, my head felt as though someone had dumped a load of gravel in it. Even worse, I was making a presentation to a potential client tomorrow. I wanted to finish my charts and get them turned into transparencies. Instead, it looked as though I’d be spending the day hunting for housing. Depending on how long that took, I could end up paying as much as quadruple overtime for the transparencies.

I sat on the dining-room floor and did some breathing exercises, trying to ease my knotted stomach. Finally I managed to relax enough to do my prerun stretches.

Not wanting to see Elena’s flushed face again, I went down the back way, picking up Peppy outside Mr. Contreras’s kitchen door. The old man stuck his head out and called to me as I closed the gate; I pretended not to hear him. I wasn’t able to be similarly deaf when I got back-he was waiting for me, sitting on the back stairs with the Sun-Times, checking out his day’s picks for Hawthorne. I tried leaving the dog and escaping up the stairs but he grabbed my hand.

“Hang on a second there, cookie. Who was that lady you was letting in last night?” Mr. Contreras is a retired machinist, a widower with a married daughter whom he doesn’t particularly like. During the three years we’ve been living in the same building he’s attached himself to my life like an adoptive uncle-or maybe a barnacle.

I jerked my hand free. “My aunt. My father’s younger sister. She has a penchant for old men with good retirement benefits, so make sure you have all your clothes on if she stops by to chat this afternoon.”

That kind of comment always makes him huffy. I’m sure he heard-and said-plenty worse on the floor in his machinist days-but he can’t take even oblique references to sex from me. He turns red and gets as close to being angry as someone with his relentlessly cheerful disposition can manage.