She was nervous, but these days, you don’t know who to let in your house. She’d seen my ad in the paper, she said, and wanted some new doors hung. We talked on the porch for a while and then she let me in. It looked like she didn’t have anything to do but keep her house clean. She gnawed her fingernails the whole time I was figuring the estimate. She kept opening and closing the top of her robe, like a nervous habit. Both the doors had been kicked out of their locks. The wood was splintered. She needed two new doors, some trim. Maybe two new locks. She wanted new linoleum in her dining room. I gave her a price for the labor and went on home, but I didn’t think I’d get the job. He was a polite young man. His name was Richard. He seemed to be very understanding when I explained that Harold had kicked the doors in. Of course I didn’t tell him everything. All I wanted was to forget about Harold, and every time I looked at the doors I thought about him.
