“Perhaps the building superintendent gave them to her.”
“Mr. Smaller? He wouldn’t do that. He could lose his job for doing something like that.”
“I am told that men do reckless things for pretty women. In fact, I have seen it.”
I shook my head. “Mr. Smaller says women break your heart so often you can’t count how many times. He says don’t let them start. Besides, he doesn’t like his bosses downtown, and they sent her here to do the work in Six-C. He says they’re all black-hearted company men, they get big pay for just picking their noses. Anyway, since they sent her from downtown, he probably thinks she’s a Bilderberger.”
Mr. Yoshioka’s mouth moved as if he were working the word around his tongue, trying to taste some meaning in it. “What is a … what you just said?”
“It’s a long story,” I replied. “Not important. Mr. Smaller wouldn’t have given her the keys, and black-hearted company men probably wouldn’t, either. So she must be a fantastic lock-picker. What did you bring in the shopping bag?”
“A device to guarantee your safety in the night.”
“What—a shotgun?”
He smiled, but it was a thin and nervous smile. “Let us hope that it does not come to that.”
31
From the small shopping bag, Mr. Yoshioka withdrew a manual drill with a crank handle, a tape measure, a pencil, a hammer, a nail, and a two-piece security-chain lock with screws.
“I have already installed one on my door. Of course this cannot keep Miss Eve Adams out when no one is at home to engage the chain. But it will assure us that she cannot intrude at night when you are sleeping.”
He held the jamb plate to the door frame and with the pencil marked the holes where the four screws would go.
“Hey, wait a second. How am I going to explain this to my mom?”
“What is there to explain? Miss Eve Adams is a dangerous and unpredictable person. She—”
“I haven’t told my mom about Eve Adams or the knife threat or the Polaroid of me sleeping, none of it.”
He blinked at me, as though I had suddenly blurred and he were trying to bring me back into focus. “Why have you not told her about such an important thing?”
“It’s complicated.”
He regarded me with a look that reminded me of someone else, and for a moment I couldn’t think who, but then I realized this was the look with which Sister Agnes regarded me on those rare days when I showed up at Saint Scholastica without my homework complete.
“You do not seem to me to be a boy who would lie to his mother,” said Mr. Yoshioka.
“I haven’t lied to Mom about Eve Adams. I just haven’t mentioned her, that’s all.”
“I suppose there must be a distinction if we think hard enough.”
“I didn’t want to worry her. She’s got enough on her mind.”
Putting down the brass jamb plate and the pencil, picking up the hammer and nail, he said, “I will explain to your mother that I worry about the two of you alone in these times of high crime. Therefore, I installed this security chain as I have in my apartment.”
“But, see, the thing is—why just us?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why wouldn’t you put one on Mrs. Lorenzo’s door and on everyone else’s door, why just on ours?”
He smiled and nodded. “Of course, because you are my friend and the others are mere neighbors, many of whom never speak to me, none of whom ever brought me cookies.”
“Well, okay, but my mother doesn’t know we’re friends.”
“You brought me cookies, we had tea together, we both recognized that Eve