A woman came out of the building walking a tiny dog on a pink leash.

“I’m going to be sick,” Mrs. Amberson said, watching the pair walk off. “What’s happened to this city?”

Mrs. Amberson tried the door, but it was firmly locked. She hit a few random buzzers, but no one answered.

“Come on,” she said, turning back toward Ninth Avenue. “There’s something else I want to see.”

This stretch of Ninth Avenue was a mixture of restaurants and bars of every sort. Thai. Greek. Chinese. Italian. Ethiopian. There was a wine bar, a beer bar, a cupcake shop, a pet boutique, and a store full of upscale paints. In short, a happy little cosmos of urban needs were fulfilled in its short distance. In the middle of it all was a midsized fancy grocery store called Food Paradise, with a large display of exotic fruits, imported cheeses, and fine pastries in the window.

“Well, at least that’s still here, sort of,” she said. “But it wasn’t a paradise.”

She crossed the street midblock, dodging a cab, and went into the store.

“You should have seen the dump that was here in the seventies,” she said, eying the olive bar. “It was truly disgusting. Moldy Wonderbread, roaches. Back then, I used to make ketchup soup.”

She walked up and down every aisle, mumbling about what she saw there. All of the food, so nicely laid out, seemed to make her first sad, then annoyed, and finally, weirdly jubilant. Scarlett just got hungry.

“Let’s go,” Mrs. Amberson said abruptly. “I’ve had enough.”

She took Scarlett’s arm and wheeled to the door. A friendly-faced security guard cleared his throat and stepped in front of them.

“Just a minute, please,” he said. “Please open your bag, miss.”

Scarlett was surprised to find that this remark was addressed to her.

“What?” Scarlett replied. “Why?”

“Just please open it.”

Mrs. Amberson stared up at the ceiling, and Scarlett got a very sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t quite account for.

“Please open your bag, miss,” the man repeated.

Scarlett pulled her bag from her shoulder warily. It was unzipped. It had been zipped before, she was sure of it. She held it open. To her amazement, there were three cans of tuna fish lying on top that had definitely not been there when she left the house.

“Those aren’t mine,” she said.

“I know that,” he said. “All right. Step over to this office with me, please. Let’s make this easy, okay?”

Scarlett felt her legs start to go soft and found herself reaching out to Mrs. Amberson’s arm for support. It was amazingly muscular.

“Scarlett!” Mrs. Amberson said. “I thought we were past this!”

“What?” Scarlett replied, wheeling around.

“We have come way too far for this,” Mrs. Amberson was rambling on.

“What are you talking about?”

Mrs. Amberson angled herself between Scarlett and the man.

“Listen,” she said. “This is totally unacceptable, but please hear me out. I’m a volunteer with Teen Reach New York, which is a group that works with troubled teens.”