The phone rang on a Tuesday morning, at 10:28 am. At first she didn’t recognize the sound, but when it went into its second repeat loop she dove her hand into the pocket of her overcoat and fished around for the tiny vibrating device. She thought how stupid it was that they kept making them smaller, these phones, as though the world was not already full of these diminishing returns. She glanced at the area code on the display and noted that it was a New York number. The other digits didn’t seem to amount to anything in particular, so when she answered, she used her best receptionist voice to say “hello?” taking care to sound just a little bit annoyed so that whoever it was would not think that she’d been sitting on a park bench sipping lukewarm coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, which in fact she had been. The voice on the other end of the line was husky but young.

“Hi, ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you but I am here with Darlene Slevens, and in her wallet she had a card with your phone number on it, and I thought -”

“What are you doing in her wallet?” She’d said the first thing that had come to mind, and would find later that she regretted this above all else, because it had betrayed her unpreparedness for what was to come next.