We had two guns in the flat, pistolas para mujeres, as the clerk had called them, pocket revolvers Zanche and I had picked up at the gun shop on the Avenida not long after our arrival. One of these Zanche carried in her purse. The other I kept behind a planter at the top of the stairs.

Late the next morning I was sitting at the desk in the hall when the doorbell rang. I heard a man’s voice below, on the other side of the locked gate, speaking with Zanche.

“Cuántas personas están aquí?”

“Por qué?”

“Hay un problema con la electricidad en este barrio. Puedo entrar, por favor?”

“Esto es una residencia privada.”

“Lo entiendo. Pero, los circuitos eléctricos . . .”

The stranger wanted access to the property—I understood that much. He spoke in a jovial, flattering way. Zanche wasn’t the kind to succumb to flattery, but something about the situation and the man’s tone got me to my feet.

I took my gun from its place behind the planter. It held a wax plant with red flowers.

I went to the bottom of the stairwell and leaned against the dirty wall, the gun tucked close against my skirt. It felt warm and small in my hands. I couldn’t hear them as well as I had from above, but I gathered the man was a workman of sorts. Or posing as such. Their conversation fell into a lull, and the lull went on. I stepped around the corner into the foyer. I stood in the shadows, holding the pistol so it couldn’t be seen.

“What’s the issue?”

“This man says there’s an electrical problem in the neighborhood,” said Zanche. “The issue is in the side alley—on a pole there.”

“Our electricity is fine.”

“He wonders if we would unlock the gate to the alley so he can investigate.”

A cyclone gate stood alongside the building, concertina wire strung overhead. The landlord kept the gate padlocked to avoid hoodlums using the alley as a throughway.

“Tell him no.”

“I’ve already done so.”

The man lurked opposite Zanche on the other side of the iron mesh, peering in. He was a burly man in gray work clothes, official looking, and he carried a clipboard. The outfit didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe the city had sent him, but everybody knew the city was corrupt and bribery was required to get service of any kind. Zanche repeated to him what I had just said. The man kept his face pushed to the mesh.

“Tell him to leave,” I said.

I stepped out of sight. The conversation went on, more animated than before, though too rapidly for me to understand. I didn’t think Zanche would let him in, but she hadn’t been herself lately. The conversation grew more subdued, the man more solicitous and friendly, as if trying to find some other means to get his way. There was another lull—and the gun grew sweaty in my hand. Just as my patience broke, Zanche came to me at the bottom of the stairs.