The Alvarez house was a quiet one; they were generally a fairly quiet family right up to the day they moved to Houston for work. Now, years later, the house, which I revitalized with some of my DPD settlement money, serves as something of a postmenopausal hippie sorority. Its occupants—retirees and longtime friends Carmela Montoya and Sylvia Zychek and their much-younger buddy Lucy Three Rivers, a Native computer whiz from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—each blast their respective preferred music (classic rock, Tejano and polka, EDM and Native flute). They also laugh loud and argue loud. All of which is often fueled by medical marijuana brownies or the occasional box of middling rosé wine.

I imagine the volume emanating from the house is predicated on the fact that Carmela and Sylvia left their good hearing behind a couple decades ago and Lucy is simply making an effort to effectively communicate with her half-deaf, moderately high, generous and loving landlords.

I was unlocking my front door when I heard Lucy’s shout from the kitchen next door. “You never listen to me! I told you this would happen! What the hell is the matter with you bitches?”

Against my better judgment, I went over.

“Seriously,” I said once Lucy flung open the door, “you guys sure you don’t need a couple nice, shiny new bullhorns? ’Cause, I mean, I don’t think you’re getting maximum screech volume.”

“Oh, ha ha,” Lucy said sarcastically. “You try dealing with these knuckleheads!”

I invited myself in.

Carmela and Sylvia sat next to each other on their cranberry velvet Victorian sofa, their faces twisted in pain. Carmela had her left leg elevated on the ornate coffee table; she was gingerly pressing a freezer-storage bag filled with ice to her knee. Sylvia had a freezer bag full of ice pressed to her left hip.

“Let me guess,” I said, looking at the two of them. “Mixed martial arts cage match with a cashier who wouldn’t accept your Kohl’s Cash?”

Lucy, her arms folded tightly over her chest, paced back and forth in front of her landladies. “This one,” she said, thrusting a forefinger at Carmela, “refuses to wear her knee brace. Her expensive, custom-fitted, high-freakin’-tech knee brace!” Lucy turned the forefinger on Sylvia. “And this one refuses to get her hip checked out by an actual doctor of medicine instead of some blond-dreadlocked, natural remedy shaman who’s been high since the age of five!”

“Don’t get old, Mr. Snow,” Carmela groaned. “It’s no fun.”

“Amen, sister,” Sylvia said.

The ladies bumped arthritic fists.

“May I see you in the kitchen, Lucy?” I said.

“Oh, what?” Lucy snapped. “Now you’re gonna give me some big badass adult wisdom?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“I’m not done with you boneheads,” Lucy said to the old girls on the sofa icing their aching bits and pieces.