Chapter 11

Because Marzipan is such a generous and responsive proprietress, there is very little turnover in the building, but the apartment directly above me had been vacant for a few weeks. The former tenants, who had been in the building for eleven years, had been cramped with their young daughter in a one-bedroom place, and when they fell pregnant with their second child they made the painful decision to leave one of Marzipan’s properties and move into larger digs. I think they ended up in San Mateo, or a similar suburb out near the airport. They had been great neighbors—friendly and chatty without being gossipy, alert to the building’s comings and goings without being nosy—but I was rather enjoying having the apartment empty. The little girl had seemed never to grow tired of running back and forth across their wood-floored apartment in work boots or tap shoes, and the raven-haired wisp of a thing somehow managed to raise a racket over my head night and day.