“Can we beat up your editor until he gives you an extension?” Heather shook her fists.

“With what, your fingernails?” Regina joked.

“I’d never get my own hands dirty,” Heather said, her mouth gaping. “I’d hire someone, of course.”

I laughed. It was an effort to picture my lithe, blond-haired and blue-eyed pseudo-aunt hitting anyone. Hitting on someone, maybe. She’d even been on the beauty-pageant circuit back in the day, having made it to the top ten in the Miss New York pageant of nineteen ninety-something.

“It’s fine. I have a few more days. I’ll whip something up.” There was no conviction in my voice, resulting in eight pairs of unconvinced eyes on me.

“You win some, you lose some, sweetie.”

“Heather’s right,” Kate said. “You’ll find a better story, I’ll pass the next bar exam, and in six months we’ll both recall this time and laugh.”

If only it were that simple. With this article came the promise of more entertainment and lifestyle story opportunities and a steady paycheck from Tea. Without it came more hustling for spin classes and shifts at the café, and cold-pitching articles for fifty cents a word if I was lucky enough to sell any. The only other avenue for making money using my writing skills was to take on more freelance assignments regardless of content, but technical writing left me uninspired. Also, building a lucrative career with freelance jobs didn’t happen overnight. It took patience and time. My time had run out. I didn’t know where I’d be living in six months. “We need the money now,” I mumbled.

“Don’t we all,” Regina said, making it clear my words had come out louder than I intended.

“I hate to break it to you, Squirt, but even our current rent is more than five hundred dollars a month.”

Kate pushed out her lips. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to find anything illegal about the rent increase.”

I mushed a dried apricot with my fork. “Me too.”

“It isn’t fair that you’re in this position and we’re not,” Charles said.

“We feel awfully guilty about it,” Tesibelle agreed, twiddling with her napkin.

Mom and I yelled, “No!” at the same time.

The possibility of my favorite seventysomethings being tossed out on the street made my blood turn hot, and I was relieved they’d been spared the rent hikes. As a child, I’d performed countless fashion shows in their living room with sample clothes Tesibelle, a retired buyer for Ross, brought home. And before his thick dark afro dwindled in the center to a thin smattering of gray wisps, Charles used to let me style his hair with bobby pins in his home office/beauty salon. It would be a shame if they couldn’t live out the rest of their lives in that apartment.