When we were finished, sunlight yellowed the front door and brightened the stairs up to Sam’s place. Clancy came out and sat on the steps looking down at us. She wore her white lab coat. Half her hair had been brushed, the other half stuck out wildly. I could see little yellow crusts of sleep in the corners of her eyes. Her eyes were large and seemed almost liquid through her glasses.

“Is there a dog up there?” She nodded toward the faint yapping coming from the upper floor.

Carlotta nodded. “Yes. It’s my dog.”

“Did you know there are cats living in this house?”

Carlotta looked down at the newspaper on the floor.

“Does Lance know that you are bringing a dog in here?” Her voice trembled like she wanted to scream.

Carlotta backed down a step to look at her. “You mean Omar? He knows.”

Clancy jumped up. Her whole body was shaking. Her nylons were bunched at the ankles.

“It’s very inconsiderate! Very, very inconsiderate. I never would have thought he’d do such a thing!”

The bald philosophy student who lived in the basement popped his pink head out of the downstairs kitchen window. “Clancy, your oatmeal’s burning.”

“Oh!” She stopped in the doorway and screeched, “You just better keep that dog away from us! My cats will kill it!” She pushed through the door, shrieking, “And I suppose you couldn’t lift your intellectual hand to take your philosophical breakfast off the stove!”

Carlotta looked at me and raised her eyebrows. We went upstairs and shut the door behind us. Dropped the last of the junk onto the spreading pile. Carlotta opened the bathroom door and let out Angelina. Sam and Rennel were huddled over an old telephone jack in the woodwork. Carlotta and I sat on the floor. She wrestled Angelina down beside her and held her, twitching.

“That girl downstairs is mad about something.”

Sam looked up anxiously. “What girl? Clancy?”

Rennel waved a screwdriver disgustedly. “Ah, she’s nuts.”

We headed to Hung Far Low, the twenty-four-hour Chinese restaurant, for a celebratory feast at 8:00 a.m.