"Get out," Richard Caldwell said. "You people always have some sob story, don't you?"
The rain had been falling for less than five minutes, but it was already running down the brownstone steps in narrow, dirty streams. Eleanor Washington stood at the entrance with a torn grocery bag against her coat and rain collecting along the cuffs of her sleeves.
Her husband, James, had placed himself half a step beside her, not quite in front of her, because even now he refused to let another man make his wife feel that she needed permission to stand in her own doorway. The street smelled of wet stone, crushed leaves, and the milk Richard had just spilled across the steps.
"We've paid every month," Eleanor said. "For eight years, Mr. Caldwell. We have not missed a payment. We aren't asking you for anything except what our agreement already promises."
Richard looked past her toward the apartment windows. Shadows moved behind curtains as their neighbors watched from the warmth of their homes. He noticed the audience and seemed to grow taller because of it. "That agreement belonged to another time," he said. "This building is worth over four million dollars. I have investors who understand what that means, and then I have you two acting like a couple of tenants can dictate my future."
James held out a hand. "Give me the papers, Richard. We can discuss this without shouting."
"Don't call me Richard." Caldwell pulled the copy of their lease from his coat, crushed it into a ball, and threw it toward her shoes. "You think a piece of paper makes you important? You think you can stay here forever because you know how to quote a paragraph?"
The paper landed in a shallow puddle beside a broken egg. For a moment, Eleanor looked at it without moving. She could hear the rain hitting James's umbrella, though he had not opened it, and somewhere behind them a child asking a parent why the people downstairs were being yelled at. Richard wiped his fingers on the front of his expensive trousers, slowly, as though handling the Washingtons' lease had left dirt on his hands. Then he stepped into the lobby and pulled the heavy door closed.
The deadbolt turned. Eleanor bent carefully to retrieve the ruined document. She was seventy-two years old, a retired pediatric surgeon, and her hands had performed operations so delicate that she once practiced tying knots beneath a microscope. Those hands shook now. She hated that he could see it through the glass.
"Leave it," James murmured. "We have copies."
"I know." She lifted the sodden paper anyway. "But I want to remember exactly what he chose to do."