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forced brightness. “I want to be as prepared as I can possibly be. My cases are my life! I live to serve! One bit of advice, before I go.”
    “What?” asked the client (impatiently).
    “Don’t forget to smile.”
    Chapter 6
    T he bank manager, seated behind his desk in his glass-walled cubical, wore a bow tie. Emma hadn’t dealt with this guy before. She was passed around among the managers. None of them wanted to deal with her twice. She sat across the desk, in the hot seat, at Citibank, conveniently located across Sixth Avenue from her apartment building. Emma had cried here. And pleaded shamelessly for extensions. Ah, the memories, she reflected nostalgically.
    “Ms. Hutch,” said the talking bow tie. “I’ve heard about you from my colleagues.” He reached a hand across the desk.
    “I’m Mr. Cannery. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
    While he click-clacked on the keyboard, Emma sized him up. Would he be nice or use her to take out his anger at every person who’d done him wrong? Bank managers, as a whole, seemed particularly spiteful.
    “According to my screen,” Mr. Cannery said, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses, “you’ve been in arrears for two months. Unless you pay what you owe, in full, plus fines, within ten days, we will be forced to…”
    “I’ve got five thousand dollars,” she said. “In cash.”
    Mr. Cannery said, “In cash?” He got a bit twitchy, edged forward on this chair, face flushed. Emma removed the bills from her purse slowly, tantalizingly. Mr. Cannery started to glow, a thin layer of expectation on his face. Emma could smell his salty excitement. Apparently, she thought, one woman’s mortgage payment was another man’s porn.
    She held out the wad of bills. Mr. Cannery, fingers shaking, breath short, reached for it. Emma snatched it back.
    “Not so fast,” she said. “This covers what I owe on the mortgage—and then some.”
    “Not exactly,” he said, “You’re short on the minimum balance in your checking account.”
    She said, “That can’t be right. Let me see.” She leaned across his desk.
    He said, “You’re not permitted to look at the computer!”
    She sat back down, wondering if he had her account info on screen or sexy photos of dollar bills in lingerie. “I need some walking around money.”
    “You have three hundred to spare,” he said. “I advise you to spend it wisely.”
    Emma said, “I was going to blow it on luxury items, like food and heat.” Then she counted out bills and forked over forty-seven hundred dollars.
    He wrote her a deposit slip, and printed out an updated mortgage statement. She stood up to leave. Mr. Cannery said,
    “Remember, you have another payment to make on November first. According to my screen, you’ve used up your last extension. If you can’t pay on the first, the bank will take possession of your property. You do not want to be in arrears again, Ms. Hutch.”
    “You bet I don’t,” she said. “Way too cramped.”
    Daphne had given her two weeks; Mr. Cannery had given her just over one. No matter how she sliced it, Emma was cut to the financial bare bones.
    To make herself feel a little bit less anxious, Emma ducked into the 14th Street Barnes & Noble and bought the Wilco CD, A Ghost Is Born. Halloween was fast approaching—her favorite holiday. She could buy herself a little seasonal ghostly cheer. Back on Sixth, she inhaled the afternoon air, crisp as a cracker. On a whim, she headed east, toward Washington Square Park. She could buy some pot there. That might help her free-floating dread. Plus, Emma had always found comfort in the park’s concentric rings around the center fountain, like Dante’s circles of hell.
    Washington Square Park (and hell?) was dotted with junkies, dealers, sleeping homeless people, street musicians, rollerbladers, artists, prophets, and hot dog stands. To Emma, it smelled and looked like home. She’d spent much of her high school years in this asphalt “park,”