"What happened?" she said when she saw my face.

"I had an encounter with Henry's lady friend," I replied.

"Ah," she said. She whacked a leek with the cleaver, sending hunks flying. "She don't come in here. She knows better."

"Rosie, the woman is crazy as a loon. You should have heard her the other night after you tangled with her. She ranted and raved for hours. Now she's accusing me of cheating Henry on the rent."

"Take a seat. I got some vodka somewhere." She crossed to the cabinet above the sink and stood on tippytoe, tilting a vodka bottle into reach, She broke the seal and poured me a hit in a coffee cup. She shrugged then poured herself one too. We drank and I could feel the blood rush back to my face.

I said, "Woo!" involuntarily. My esophagus felt scorched and I could sense the contours of my stomach outlined in alcohol. I always pictured my stomach much lower down than that. Weird. Rosie placed the chopped leeks in a bowl and rinsed the cleaver at the sink before she turned back to me.

"You got twenty cents? Give me two dimes," she said, holding a hand out. I fished around in my handbag, coming up with some loose change. Rosie took it and crossed to the pay phone on the wall. Everybody has to use that pay phone, even her.

"Who are you calling? You're not calling Henry," I said, with alarm.

"Ssss!" She held a hand up, shushing me, her eyes focusing in the way people do when someone picks up the phone on the other end. Her voice got musical and syrupy.

"Hello, dear. This is Rosie. What are you doing right this minute. Uh-hun, well I think you better get over here. We have a little matter to discuss."

She clunked the receiver down without waiting for a response and then she fixed me with a satisfied look. "Mrs. Lowenstem is coming over for a chat."

Moza Lowenstein sat on the chrome-and-plastic chair that I'd brought in from the bar. She is a large woman with hair the color of a cast-iron skillet, worn in braids wrapped around her head. There are strands of silver threaded through like tinsel, and her face, with its pale powder, has the soft look of a marshmallow. Generally, she likes to hold on to something when she talks to Rosie: a bouquet of pencils, a wooden spoon, any talisman to ward off'attack. Today, it was the dish towel she'd brought with her. Apparently, Rosie had interrupted her in the middle of some chore and she'd hurried right over, as bid. She's afraid of Rosie, as anyone with good sense would be. Rosie launched right in, skipping all the niceties.

"Who is this Lila Sams?" Rosie said. She took up her cleaver and began to pound on some veal, making Moza flinch.

Her voice, when she found it, was trembly and soft. "I don't really know. She came to my door, she said in response to an ad in the paper, but it was all a mistake. I didn't have a room for rent and I told her as much. Well, the poor thing burst into tears and what was I to do? I had to ask her in for a cup of tea."

Rosie paused to stare in disbelief. "And then you rented her a room?"

Moza folded the towel, forming a lobster shape like a napkin in a fancy restaurant. "Well, no. I told her she could stay with me until she found a place, but she insisted that she pay her own way. She didn't want to be indebted, she said."

"That's called room rent. That's what that is," Rosie snapped.

"Well, yes. If you want to put it that way."

"Where does this woman come from?"

Moza flapped the towel out and dabbed it against her upper lip, blotting sweat. She laid it out on her lap and pressed it with her hand, keeping her fingers together in a wedge like an iron. I saw Rosie's flinty gaze follow every movement and I thought she might give Moza's hand a smack with the cleaver. Moza must have thought so too because she quit fiddling with the towel and looked up at Rosie with guilt. "What?"

Rosie enunciated carefully, as though speaking to an alien. "Where does Lila Sams come from?"

"A little town in Idaho."

"What little town?"

"Well, I don't know," Moza said defensively.

"You have a woman living in your house and you don't know what town she comes from?"

"What difference does it make?"

"And you don't know what difference it makes?" Rosie stared at her with exaggerated astonishment. Moza broke eye contact and folded the towel into a bishop's miter.

"You do me a favor and you find out," Rosie said. "Can you manage that?"

"I'll try," Moza said. "But she doesn't like people prying. She told me that and she was quite definite."