“It’s nothing you need to worry about, señora.”
“That envelope has my company’s seal on it.”
He exhales once, slow and defeated, then shifts the baby again. “It’s a notice,” he says. “They’re buying the block. Or trying to. The landlord says we have sixty days, maybe less. Some neighbors already left because the rent doubled. Some are fighting, but…” He gives a small, humorless shrug. “People like us do not usually win long fights.”
The girl appears in the doorway before you can respond.
She is maybe eleven, thin as a bookmark, with a faded yellow inhaler in one hand and a workbook tucked under the other arm. Her eyes are enormous, fever-bright, and fiercely observant. She takes one look at your suit, your heels, your watch that costs more than this house, and says, “You’re the lady from the office.”
Carlos stiffens. “Lucía.”
“What?” she says. “I saw her picture on the Christmas card.”
You have no answer ready for that.
There is something unbearable about being recognized not as a person but as a framed symbol, a signature at the bottom of paychecks, a glossy holiday image mailed from your forty-third-floor conference room. You look away from the child and back to the table, to the envelope with your company name gleaming on paper that suddenly looks predatory. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” you ask Carlos. “About this. About any of it.”
He laughs once, a short brittle sound.
