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received no special thanks, but still considered it enough that it was over, my pro bono completed for the year.
    Of course no good deed goes unpunished. Richard rezoned some territories and shifted a number of people about, explaining at meetings that a shake-up was always good, kept the blood flowing. I expected to hear a lot of bitching about it. For instance I was shifted so that part of my best grouping was split, and my new territory was a more down-market area. It potentially could cut my—occasionally soft—commissions by a significant amount in a bad year. I expected a lot of brokers would be feeling bitter. Hot young woman comes into the office, the gravy gets spooned a little thinner, so when no one said anything, I wondered if we had begun operating in an atmosphere of fear.
    I brought it up with one of the brokers I knew a little bit.
    “How about the new zoning, huh?” I said, running into Cathy at the copier. It was a little close to Richard’s office, but I’d lost about five pounds recently and was feeling the bravado.
    To my surprise, she said, “I know. I’ve almost doubled my numbers this month. Brilliant.”
    I think my jaw dropped, but I said, “Yes. Brilliant.”
    The office distracted me. I went dutifully up to ten to water the Bramleys’ plants through the two weeks they were gone. I collected mail and it piled up on the island in the kitchen. Sometimes I lingered; the empty apartment was twice as large as mine and the cavernous silence gave me a kind of peace. The view was spectacular, of course. If I opened the kitchen window and leaned out, I could see clear down to the river, the quaint old-fashioned water towers surrounded by pretty park-like roofs with chaise-and-teak lounging stations on each one. It was nice.
    I continued to struggle with sleep. I had my little helpers, but I tried not to overuse them. I knew too many stories of women my age getting dependent on chemical help for everything. When I went through menopause, I was the only one of my friends who did not succumb to the seductive powers of hormone replacement. My fear of aging was surpassed only by my fear of cancer and somehow when offered the choice between a young-looking corpse and dying alone in an assisted-living room, I decided the latter wasn’t so bad. You could always watch television. And if it got too lonely or undignified, I could take all the rest of my little helpers and end it all on a date of my choice.
    I preferred a natural hell to a foggy complacency.
    But sleep was often elusive.
    I was having a cup of tea in the kitchen, the light over the stove the only illumination, since I didn’t want to disturb Kevin. I drank my camomile tea—a guaranteed cure for insomnia according to television—and flipped through the new
Vanity Fair
, staring at celebrity faces I didn’t recognize and political scandals I no longer cared about.
    And I heard singing.
    The window was open to the front street and I thought of course that it must be coming from there. I went over and peered out, but couldn’t see anyone outside. I checked the clock and it was well after three. Still, listening, it wasn’t the drunken frat-singing that you do occasionally hear on lovely summer nights when the college kids band together and walk over to the park to watch the sun come up. There was nothing mirthful or disjointed about it. It was more like
chanting
. Churchy.
    I opened the screen and stuck my head out. It served no better to prove anything, except that it was coming from above. I twisted my head up as though that would vet something, and it didn’t.
    The music faded in and out with the breeze and I decided someone’s radio was tuned to NPR.
    I ran into Gig Morton a few afternoons later, at the front desk. I was about to collect the Bramleys’ mail and take it up, when she stopped me.
    “Anita, have you heard?”
    “Heard what? I’m just getting the mail, come with me.” We walked to the mailboxes and she kept talking in