Kate crept out onto the porch. “Well, here I am. I’m answering the door. You can get down now.”

“No I can’t. I can’t get down.”

“Wonderful. Okay, I’ll try to give you a hand. Just hang on.” Kate swung a leg over the wrought-iron railing and grabbed the back of the old lady’s coat. “Gotcha! Try to work your way over to me.”

“I’m going to fall.”

“No you’re not. I’ve got hold of you.”

“That’s the problem, you ninny. You’re pulling me off the ledge.” Elsie reached out and grabbed a handful of nightgown in a last-ditch effort to keep her balance, but it was too late. A moment later both women were lying in a heap in an eighteen-year-old azalea bush.

David Dodd stood on the rain-splattered brick sidewalk with a bag of doughnuts in his hand. “If I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes, I’d never have believed it.”

Kate tugged her nightgown down over her knees and struggled to free herself from the bush. “Where’d you come from? Why do you always arrive after a disaster?”

“I went to the bakery. I always go to the bakery on Sunday morning.” He lifted Kate off the flattened azalea. “I was walking down the street, thinking how boring my life was before I met you, and there you were… flying through the air in your nightgown.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna help me up?” Elsie asked. “I probably broke every bone in my body.”

Dave eased her to her feet and plucked a twig from hair the color and texture of steel wool. “Next time you do windows you should use a ladder,” he said.

Elsie narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t do windows. I’m here about the room.” She straightened her coat, hauled herself up the front stairs, and let herself into the house. “How come there’s no furniture in this house?”

“Easier to vacuum,” Dave said.

“Hmmph, one of them clean freaks, huh? That’s okay by me, but I’m an old lady. I need a bed, a chair, a TV. I suppose the room’s upstairs?”

“Yeah, but the room’s sort of a mess,” Kate said. “It’s not really ready to be rented.”

Elsie stuffed her hands onto her hips and leaned forward, all set for battle. “Say what? If it’s not ready to be rented, then how come you advertised?”

“I had this little accident here yesterday.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “What kind of accident?”

“A chunk of metal from a helicopter fell through my roof.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kate brushed at a smudge of mud on her nightgown. “And it rained before we could close up the hole.”