A baby grand piano anchored one side of the living room. The California sun found its way through the vertical blinds, and a nearly blinding kaleidoscope of light glinted off mementos placed carefully on the ledge of the piano near the open lid. The instrument, well used and richly oiled, was marked with the standard signature of elegance — Steinway. Its keys had yet to yellow, but the legs and one edge had chips from when the boy had slammed a little plastic truck or a bat or toy into it. When Mona’s two children still lived at home, her daughter, Tiffany, would play and sing the way a teenager does when she is sure in her skill but not so sure in herself. Mona had fought for the piano when her husband left ten years ago, a fierce mother protecting her cubs from even more loss. There was not much music in the house since the children moved out. A clock whose chime sounds softly at the 15- and 45- minute marks, and more enthusiastically at the half hour and hour, moved closer toward mid-day.

In the living room, Mona, not yet 60, frail in her carriage, bones as thin as a bird’s, moved carefully about the room, running a cloth over every surface, lifting knickknacks, wiping them and returning them to their place. Memories followed each item.  She pulled them into focus with a running internal dialogue: "Adam gave me this for my birthday. He was such a sweet boy." And her daughter Tiffany—"I wish she had stayed longer at Christmas. I miss her playing the piano." She was troubled by Tiffany’s choice to move in with her boyfriend in San Diego. She still had a lease. It was irresponsible for her to pay rent at two places when they had planned her budget to the penny. The clock chimed noon, and perhaps briefly distracted, not as precise as anyone who knew her would expect her to be, she set down Tiffany’s swan snow globe too close to the inside edge of the open piano and then watched as it fell into the piano wires and shattered.

Five hundred miles away, a man strolling the concrete walkways of an apartment building climbed the stairs to the second floor. At the door of an apartment, he put his hand on the knob and turned it slowly. It was locked. Briefly he considered pulling out his credit card to jimmy the lock. Instead he moved further away from the stairway, looking for an apartment out of sight, one easy to enter unnoticed. He was attractive and there was a steadiness to his gaze. His face was round and flat, the reason for his childhood nickname, “Moon Pie.”  His shoulders were broad, with rippling muscles and hands surprisingly small and delicate. He typically wore a hooded jacket, red and worn, but  there was little need for the added layer in San Diego, even on a January day. His pants were precisely creased, fitted, the perfect length —he was a neat man by most standards —not sagging and low hung as they were on his friends who were bent on imitating gangster chic. He was from Alabama. Former Navy.

The man kept his casual pace, and in a sheltered corner came upon a woman sunbathing, her chaise lounge set partway inside her apartment so as not to block the walkway. She wore no top. He turned on the charm his girlfriend said could con anybody anywhere into doing what he wanted. His mouth seemed at most times to pucker sweetly, and in this moment most likely he smiled. When he met a woman he wanted, he approached casually, perhaps slipping his hands in his pockets or leaning against a wall. He might ask after a friend’s apartment, a friend who did not exist. Then the weather or a place possibly for rent. After the small talk, he would fix her with a stare and a suggestion. When he got shut down, the stare would become a glare.