At first, when I was a kid, my dad had owned places in old neighborhoods, the ones he told me not to go to. He never even went there, just had other people who took care of them. He didn’t have to deal with any complaints, which he said was good because the people who lived there were the people who tried to get free rent any way they could.

Then time went on, I grew up, and the city got better, like I said before. My dad turned a lot of his crummy old buildings into really nice ones. The people who lived there were the sort of people he wanted to rent to, not had to rent to.

Bernice came, and my dad lost a lot, that was for sure. So it was his duty, and my duty I guess, too, to salvage anything we could.

One day, I was sitting on the couch watching the OLED screen, and Tina came rushing into the room. She was in her workout clothes. She works out about a billion hours a day, I swear.

“Evann,” she said. “Turn on the news. Turn it on right now.”

I turned on my wristscreen and went to the New York local news. I saw a building there, but at first it didn’t make much difference to me.

“What am I even supposed to be seeing?” I said.

“That’s your father’s building,” she said. “One of them.”

“Oh,” I said. The camera was focused in on a group of people gathered around the door. “What are they all doing there?”

“They’re living in it,” she said. “Can you believe that? With no heat, or hot water, or anything; they’ve been living there like animals all this time. They must have destroyed everything in the place by now. I feel sorry for your father’s renters.”

“Still?” I asked. It seemed like ages since the storm. Little pockets of revitalization had popped up, but not this far out in Brooklyn, not yet. I assumed those parts of the city were ghost towns, all abandoned except for what was destroyed. But here these people were.

“There’s more, Evann,” Tina said. “Wait until the news camera pulls out.”

I waited. Finally, there was a wide shot of the building. I drew in my breath. There was this amazing painting up on the wall of the building. As soon as I saw it, I thought of my Basquiat that had been destroyed when those people took over my co-op. I saw all the things in it that hallmarked greatness—true, real, magnifique brilliance. I had to have it. But there was no question about that. It was already mine.

“Tina!” I shouted, grabbing her. “We have to preserve that painting! We have to have it removed and preserved!”

“How would we do that?” she asked.