“The difference, Felix, is that cripples remain crippled while you can be up and around soon enough. If you follow orders.”

“Hear, hear,” he said. To me: “Had surgery five weeks ago. You don’t want to know the details.”

Grace said, “He certainly doesn’t.”

“Let’s just say plumbing issues and leave it at that.”

“Felix.”

He rotated his arm. “They cored and bored me, like an engine. Roto-Rooter wasn’t picking up their messages so I had to go to a urologist.”

“Fee-lix! TMI.”

“What’s that mean, sweetie?”

“Don’t play innocent with me, young man. The grandkids always say it when you’re overdoing.”

“Ah,” he said. “Too Many Issues.”

“Exactly.” She brought a silver tray holding three coffees and a box of cookies. “Pepperidge Farm Milano Mints, Doctor. Cream?”

“Black’s fine.”

Pouring, she sat down next to her husband. They lifted their cups but waited until I’d sipped.

I said, “Delicious. Thanks.”

Felix said, “Here’s to another day aboveground.”

“So dramatic,” said Grace, but her voice caught.

I said, “Nice paintings.”

“They’re all we have room for, I don’t like crowding, art needs room to breathe.” She sipped. “In Santa Fe we have oodles of wall space but not being there much of the year we don’t like to hang anything too serious.”

“In S.F., we patronize the local artists,” said Felix. “Nice level of talent but not much in the way of investment.”

“Life’s about more than compound interest, dear.”

“So you keep telling me.”

I said, “Have you lived here long?”

“Ten years.”

“Bought the building fifteen years ago,” said Felix. “Followed it up by buying the rest of this side of the block.”

“There you go again,” said Grace. “Making like a tycoon.”

“Just citing facts, sweetie.” Working to steady his hand, he put his cup down. Bone china rattled. Coffee sloshed and spilled. His lips moved the same way Milo’s do when he wants to curse.

Grace Monahan bit her lip, returned to smiling at nothing in particular.

Felix Monahan said, “The original plan was to tear the entire block down and build one big luxury condo but the city proved obdurate so we kept the block as is and went into the landlord business. The last thing on our minds was actually moving here, we had a fine Wallace Neff on Mountain Drive above Sunset. Then our daughter moved to England and we said, what do we need thirty rooms for, let’s downsize. The house sold quickly, those were the days, caught us off-guard and we hadn’t found a new one. This apartment was vacant so we said let’s bunk down temporarily.”

Grace said, “We found out we liked the simplicity and here we are.”

“Tell him the real reason, sweetie.”

“Convenience, darling?”