We spent the last few weeks as we had the first, avoiding one another. I boxed up all my books and clothes and moved them to a friend’s apartment, leaving the bookcase for a day when I could borrow a truck. However, the weekend before I left I came home to find it—the bookcase—dragged into the hall and lying on its side. Fredricka was waiting for me again in her bedroom. I asked her, you know, what the hell, and she explained that Janey wanted the bookcase now that I was leaving. In a calm voice I told her no, the bookcase wasn’t hers to give. She insisted that it was—after all, she was the one who’d found it—and I laughed at her: ‘It’s street trash! You found it on the street. I’m the one who brought it up the stairs.’ To which she screeched: ‘My neighbor gave it to me! Janey is my tenant, and I am giving it to her!’ Fine, I said. Janey could have it. But she’d have to wait until I left. I’d paid rent for one last week in what was supposed to be a furnished room—I was almost shouting at this point—and I’d be damned if I was going to let her sneak in while I was gone and haul my furniture away. She couldn’t drag my bed out into the hall, so why did she think she could commandeer the bookcase? Fredricka muttered, through literally clenched teeth, that I wasn’t even using it. This was true: all my books were already gone, and the shelves were empty. Oh, I assured her, I’d find something to put on it all right. A coffee mug. Socks. Maybe some spare change. The whole week I had left with it, I planned to make the most use of it I could. When I turned to leave, I heard the bedsprings creak, then her creaking voice: ‘Don’t you dare touch that bookcase! You’ll be sorry!’

She followed me down the hall. And when I started to pull the bookcase back into my bedroom, she grabbed the opposite end of it. Still wearing her nightgown, her withered arms straining and shaking, she glowered across at me. I tightened my grip. Honestly, I did not even want the bookcase. Not this much. I just couldn’t stand the thought of letting her have it. And somehow, even then, part of me recognized that this moment was more narrative than life—that what was happening, what I was experiencing, was already material, an anecdote I would be regaling friends with for years: ‘That Time I Fought An Old Woman For A Bookcase.’ And so I was willing to do almost anything—not just to win the bookcase, but to make it a better story. If she wanted a tug-of-war, I was not too proud to give her one.