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for Jules's reaction. The telephone rang as they walked toward it, and without hesitating, almost without breaking stride, Jules simply picked up the receiver and let it drop immediately back onto the base. No, not drop: Jules slammed it down in a small burst of fury and continued on out of the apartment. Kate followed, waited while Jules dug the key from her shorts pocket and locked the door, and then spoke to the back that she was following down the hallway.
    "Get a lot of wrong numbers, do you?" She was totally unprepared for the girl's reaction: Jules whipped around, long braids flying and her face frozen, as if daring Kate to push an inquiry, and then she started down the stairs at a pace so fast, it was almost running. Kate caught up with her at the downstairs neighbor's door, putting out a hand to touch the girl's arm.
    "Jules, are you getting a lot of crank phone calls?"
    The girl stared at the doorbell, and then the rigidity in her shoulders gave way and she exhaled.
    "No, not a lot. I just had one a while back that was really weird, and I guess I'm still jumpy when the phone rings if I'm alone. Stupid to just hang up like that, isn't it? I mean, what if it was Mom?"
    "Or Dio?"
    She turned to stare at Kate. "God, I didn't think about that. He's never phoned me," she said doubtfully. "But he could."
    "If you're having a problem, Jules, you can always have your phone number changed. Or you can arrange with the phone company --"
    "No!" she said fiercely. "I don't want to change the number, and I don't want to bring the phone company into it."
    "Use the answering machine, then, to screen your calls."
    "I do, sometimes."
    "Have you told your mom, or Al?"
    "It only happened once!" Jules nearly shouted. "It's not a problem."
    "It sounds to me like it is."
    "Really, Kate, it's not. It's just all the stuff about Dio - it's getting to me. But if whoever it is starts up again, I promise I'll ask Mom to change the number." Jules reached for the doorbell again, and this time Kate let her ring it.
    The matriarch of the Hidalgo clan did not quite match the short, squat, big-bosomed surrogate-grandmother-to-the-neighborhood image Kate had formed. True, her skin was the color of an old penny, and true, the smell of something magnificent on the stove filled the stairwell; there was even the clear indication that half the children on the block had moved in. However, the good seniora had a waist slimmer than Kate's, and the jeans and scoop-necked pink T-shirt she wore covered a body taut with aerobic muscles. She also wore a small microphone clipped to the front of her shirt, like a newscaster's mike, only pointing down. She looked at her two visitors with concern.
    "Julia, you are home early. Was there a problem at the school?" She gave the name a Spanish pronunciation, but her accent was mild.
    "
Buenos dias, Senora
," said Jules carefully. "No
hay problema. Este es mi amiga Kate Martinelli. Yo tengo... tiene... yo tenia una problema, y ella va a ayudarme con, er .
. ."
    "That was very good, Julia; you're coming along rapidly. I'm pleased to meet you, Ms Martinelli. Rosa Hidalgo." She put out her hand, which was as firm as the rest of her. "Come in. I was just finishing here. Fieldwork for my thesis in child psychology," she added, looking over her shoulder.
    The room was awash with children, along with a number of maternal types planted around the edges like boulders. Rosa Hidalgo moved surely through the small multicolored heads, avoiding the clutter of blocks and toys that covered the floor like debris from a shrapnel bomb.
    "That's great for today. Thank you all. How about lunch now? Eh, amigos," she said in higher tones, "you hungry? Burritos, peanut butter, tuna fish, and tell Angelica what you want to drink." She began folding away tape recorder and mike while various boulders moved forward to scoop the abandoned toys into containers and the children, all of them small, marginally verbal, but astonishingly noisy, washed off to