Get yourself together, I say to myself. You came here to find something out so don’t act like a deer in headlights and make her think you’re an idiot. If you want to find out who Nicholas was friends with, you have to give her something first.

“Sorry, I’m just a little distressed over everything that has happened,” I say, clearing my throat.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Crawford asks, dragging on her cigarette.

“Well, you see, Nicholas got arrested.”

“Arrested?” She smirks.

I thought she would be surprised but instead she just sits down on the couch and shakes her head and laughs. Her laugh is thick and throaty, forming somewhere in the deep of her stomach and coming out like a crackle. Instead of joy, it’s full of contempt.

“They arrested him for supposedly killing his old partner from the streets but I don’t think he did it,” I say, trying another approach.

Surely, she doesn’t think her son is capable of anything like this.

She takes another drag on her cigarette and adjusts her over-sized nightgown that zips up the front. It has large pink flowers on it adding to its general shapelessness, though it’s probably quite comfortable.

“Eh, who the hell knows what that kid is capable of,” she says.

“He didn’t do this, Mrs. Crawford,” I insist.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know the first thing about my son.”

I refuse to accept that, even though a small part of me sort of believes her. Still, I can’t let her know this.

“He promised to pay for this apartment. He put me in here. Said that my old neighborhood is shit and I should live somewhere else. I agree. But now what? He hasn’t sent me rent in two months. One more and they’re going to start eviction proceedings, if they haven’t yet. And then I’m going to have to move again. Do you know what that’s like for a woman my age?”

“I’m really sorry about that, Mrs. Crawford.”

I am not sure what else to say. I was about to ask her about his old friends when she went on this rant and now it only feels right to acknowledge her predicament.

“Do you have any money?” she asks.

Her bluntness makes me take a step back as if her words were actually a physical blow.

“No…um, no, I don’t.”

She looks me up and down, analyzing the value of my shoes up to my coat and scarf.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

I have no idea what exactly she saw in my attire but it definitely doesn’t reflect like I have more than twenty bucks to spend on the whole ensemble.

“Let me assure you, I don’t have any money. And frankly, I didn’t even realize that Nicholas had any.”