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Dorothea Puente that her favorite tenant's buddy didn't trust her.
    The next time Bill Johnson stopped by for a visit, Bert wasn't there, so Mrs. Puente seized this opportunity to give him a tour of the premises. She slowly led him through the house, room to room, purring with fondness for Bert. She showed him the thriving vegetable garden, gushing about how Bert so enjoyed helping with the gardening, and was so helpful with the weeding and planting. She steered Johnson downstairs, pointing out that a downstairs refrigerator was stocked with sodas so that her tenants could help themselves (unusual for this sort of establishment), and showed him that most of the tidy rooms had televisions.
    Bert's room, Johnson noticed, was spotless. But as they wandered in and out, what lodged in Johnson's mind were not the domestic touches, the quilts and paperbacks, the cleanliness and comfort of the house, but the delectable aromas streaming from the oven. Pot roast: mouth-watering and savory.
    Later, with that tantalizing fragrance still in his nostrils, Johnson grudgingly admitted to himself that such hearty fare set Puente's place above others. Bert was lucky to be living here. Few former Detox dwellers had it so good.
    With time, Johnson learned that Dorothea Puente did much more than the ordinary boardinghouse operator, and took special care of Bert. She cooked him Mexican meals, and Johnson knew how Bert loved Mexican food. And she made sure Bert went to church every Sunday, a fact that the devout Mr. Johnson found heartening, since he'd assumed a similar role for Bert back at Detox.
    Still, Johnson wasn't as thrilled as some about the changes in Bert. It seemed to him that the landlady "hovered over him, put too much emphasis on his appearance." She was always straightening his collar or flicking lint off his shoulders, and she made him wear a sports coat, even in hot weather. In retrospect, Johnson perceived that Mrs. Puente wielded excessive control over his docile friend. "She manipulated him," he decided. But that's hindsight.
    Dorothea Puente was taking such good care of Bert that the other tenants were jealous. They complained that she babied him and granted him special favors. And it was true. She made lunches for him, while everyone else was offered only breakfast and dinner. She gave him spending money, and even ran a tab for Bert across the street at Joe's Comer Bar, supporting what became Bert's daily pilgrimage to the darkened tavern for burritos and beer.
    Moreover, it was uncommonly generous of Dorothea to agree to take in Bert even before his entitlement checks started coming. He wouldn't start receiving food stamps until early March, his first SSI check wouldn't come until June, and in the meantime he was living at 1426 F Street, for $175 per month, more or less on credit. Dorothea had said that if Bert's benefit checks were at first a little slow in coming, that was all right. This was typical of the extraordinarily kind Dorothea Puente.
    Various charities—from the Policemen's Association to Mexican-American groups—benefited from her checkbook. On occasion, she even made it to the hundred-dollar-a-plate political fund-raisers. Sometimes she would pop into the Camellia Senior Center to donate a box or two of clothes—sometimes men's, sometimes women's. She made sure that workers collected her recyclables every Friday, which contributed a little extra cash to the work furlough center. And every Thanksgiving she donated a turkey to some needy group.
    John Sharp, a tall, thin man with keen blue eyes and a bald pate rimmed with white hair, had nothing but praise for his new landlady. Sharp had moved in about a month before Bert. Just out of the hospital after back surgery, the sixty-four-year-old retired cook had no place to sleep. But Puente had a room for him under the stairway landing at the rear of the house for $160 per month, plus another $87 in food stamps.
    To him, she seemed a whirlwind of activity,