Invasion of Privacy

lapse of time, same lack of response.
    Mrs. Lynch, in her sixties, lived alone on the first floor. Her son, Drew, shared the second with his wife and baby. I pushed the middle button.
    When the front door opened a foot, Drew stood inside wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt over red sweatpants, his right arm hanging straight down from the shoulder, the hand hidden behind his thigh. As he recognized me, the right hand came out, relaxing its grip on a long-barreled revolver.
    “Drew, I’m really sorry to disturb you, but Nancy’s not answering her phone or the bell, and I’m kind of worried.”
    A nod. “I heard her walking around the kitchen above us, so she’s there.”
    I didn’t ask to come in, but he swung the door wide for me to enter. Saying thanks, I moved past him and up the stairs, trying my best not to take them two at a time.
    On the third landing, I waited until I heard Drew’s apartment door close below me, then knocked gently on Nancy’s. I could hear Renfield pawing against the other side, but nothing else. I knocked louder, and the cat upped the ante too, now mewling a little as he couldn’t get at whatever was on my side of the door.
    I bent down and over the sill said, “Renfield, tell her if she doesn’t open up, I’m kicking it in.”
    That’s when the deadbolt clicked back, and the door finally cracked ajar.
    Renfield scuttled out, his bent rear legs churning like a locomotive’s wheel linkage, his clawless front paws trying to burrow a hole through my shoe laces. Nancy stood in front of me. She wore a cotton turtleneck under a fuzzy mauve robe, knee socks going up past the hem of the robe. Her eyes were red, and her hair was mussed, but less like she’d been lying down and more like she’d been tossing and turning.
    In a hurt voice, Nancy said, “Didn’t you get my message?”
    “No. When did you leave me one?”
    “A couple of hours ago.”
    Well after I’d checked in from Vermont . “What did your message say?”
    Nancy closed her eyes. “That I was still on trial tomorrow, and couldn’t see you tonight because I wasn’t feeling well and had to make up for all the time I lost today.” The explanation sounded brittle. “Time you lost going to the doctor’s?”
    Opening her eyes, she started to say something, then stopped.
    “Nance, how about if you let me in?”
    A frown.
    I said, “Maybe before Renfield tears the shoes from my feet?”
    She stepped back and turned away, the cat leaving me alone as he trailed her into the apartment.
    I came through the door and closed it behind me, noticing the tape from our Scottish fiddle night still on the shelf near her telephone. Then I followed Nancy and Renfield into the living room.
    She plopped herself down on the couch, the cat at his station under the glass-topped coffee table, where I’d feed him scraps if we were eating. But instead of food covering the table, there was only a half-glass of white wine and a box of tissues, some soul-rending jazz piano at low volume coming from the stereo.
    I sat across from her on a chair. “Nance?”
    “It’s just...” She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s just this stuff they’re doing at the courthouse.”
    “What stuff?”
    “Well, when you came to pick me up, you saw all the scaffolding they have against the building?”
    “Yes?”
    “They’ve been renovating, but they put some kind of waterproofing chemical on the outside last June, and when the fumes seeped into the rooms, everybody started feeling sick.”
    “Sick how?”
    “Oh, nausea, dizziness”— Nancy gestured at her face— “itchy eyes, even migraines.”
    “And that’s the problem?”
    “Yes,” unconvincingly.
    “Nance?”
    “What?”
    “The fumes have been there since June, and they’re only getting to you in October?”
    “They affect different people differently. And different parts of the courthouse at different times.”
    I just stared at her.
    She said, “The Clerk’s office got the worst of it at first, and they closed the whole building four days in August while a vent system was being installed. Even the people just using the Social Law Library felt it.”
    I stared some more.
    “The Appeals Court is way up on fifteen, John, and three of the judges had to be moved off-site—they’re doing their business now from Middlesex and even Concord District Court via personal computers and fax machines.”
    “ Nancy .”
    Now she stared at me.
    I said, “Making it longer doesn’t make it