A strange wailing rose and fell on the other side of the wall. Ziva tightened her grip on the brush. The walls were solid concrete, held together by thick steel rods, a legacy of the newspaper factory they had belonged to up until the eighties, when developers had first turned their eye toward this corner of the city. Now part of an apartment block three stories high in the newly fashionable side of Brooklyn, they were supposed to be insulated against drilling and hammering alike.

At last, the din gave way to silence. Relaxing her fingers around the long stem of the brush, Ziva returned to shading in the school of nishikigoi swimming in the depths of a red Solo cup, which itself was held in the bejeweled fingers of a pope with the head of a stag. She had finished the antlers yesterday, in a furious flash of inspiration, opting for gold and green rather than the ivory-beige so common in nature.

Sinuous bodies acquired depth and contour beneath the stroke of pigment-laden bristles. The fish were smaller than she’d intended, but their multitude made them appear both charming and slightly off-putting. ‘Translucent slimy things,’ Dexter had called them when she described her idea to him. Ziva smiled at the memory. For the manager of a profitable boutique art gallery, her friend Dexter Perry took a conservative view of art. He had asked Ziva on more than one occasion why she couldn’t stick to painting some nice landscapes. Wasn’t New York inspiring enough? What about portraits?

Ziva’s answer was always the same. She didn’t choose what she painted. Her subjects chose her. Some, like the meditation on consumerism currently unfurling before her, were more allegorical. Others were suggestive—a flower blossom, a scorpion’s arced tail.

‘That’s why you’re the artist and I’m the money man,’ Dexter would say, a tad dismissive. Ziva didn’t mind. Nothing good had ever come of her trying her hand at business. She didn’t have the head for it. The last time she’d attempted it, she had driven her father’s company into bankruptcy and had wound up selling the surviving branches piecemeal.

At least the old man hadn’t lived to see his life’s work destroyed.

On the other side of the wall, the wailing resumed. Her temper already pricked by the familiar sting of memory, Ziva rubbed a paint-smeared knuckle into the narrow dip between her eyebrows.

Art was suffering, as Dexter often teased, but there were limits. The refurbishment efforts next door had been ongoing since March. Summer was almost over and still they hadn’t finished tearing down walls and replacing the plumbing.

The whine of a sanding machine kicked up another notch. Ziva’s knuckles went white around the brush. With a furious twist, she dropped it beside her palette and ripped off her apron.

Her loft was a long, L-shaped room with a single sleep area on a raised platform about eight feet from the ground. Beneath it, in a wardrobe with no doors, Ziva stored her shoes and clothes. She yanked out a pair of flip-flops from the nearest rack and shoved them onto her feet, barely slowing her stride.

A powerful, musty smell hit her nostrils as soon as she jerked open the front door. The din was louder on the landing, courtesy of her neighbor’s door gaping open to reveal the swarm of construction workers laboring within.

“Excuse me!” Ziva’s voice cracked. Not that it mattered. If the loud drone and whir of machinery hadn’t drowned her out, then surely the cacophony of dozens of overlapping male voices would have done so.

No one paid her any mind.

Plastic covered a portion of the hardwood floor from threshold to kitchen island, where began an asymmetrical puzzle of gray stone slabs upon which sat gleaming new cupboards and shiny appliances. The counters were granite, left deliberately rough as if to contrast the smooth cooktop and sink.

For a moment, Ziva was left speechless. Big money had gone into this renovation. Her own apartment, bought with the very last of her cash when her bank balance seemed about to veer into the red, still sported its original, mid-eighties fixtures. Three of the overhead kitchen lights refused to function and the oven was far more useful for storing her paints than for baking.

“Can I help you?” a deep, gravelly voice piped up out of nowhere.

Ziva turned, startled, and her surprise only grew when she discovered a skinny African-American man behind her. Even with sleeves rolled up, his shirt and tie put her ripped jeans and Coca Cola T-shirt to shame. He might have been a contractor, but he looked more like TV’s idea of a lawyer. “Um, yes,” Ziva said, catching herself. “I live next door.” She gestured to the landing behind her.

The man arched his brow in silent prompting.

“Your men are the worst racket. Now, I’ve tried to be patient. I didn’t say anything for the last four months, but enough is enough.” As she spoke, Ziva’s tone rose, her face growing warmer. Here was further proof that the business world was not for her. The moment her heart began to pump faster, whether from embarrassment or rage, her naturally pale cheeks darkened to a glaring pink, the blush spreading down her neck and chest in mortifying splotches. She knew it was happening now. She could tell by the slight dip of the man’s gaze—not so low that he was addressing her chest when he spoke but not high enough to meet her eyes.

“I’m sorry, but all the permits are in order—”

“That’s not the point!” Ziva interjected.

“I understand, ma’am,” he said, suddenly placating, “but I’m afraid we’re on a deadline here. If you’d like to register a complaint with the police, you’re welcome to do that. Not sure what it’d accomplish. As unpleasant as it is, I have to ask you bear with us a little longer.”

“Unpleasant? I can’t hear myself think!” Worst of all were the intermittent screeches between the rounds of drilling that shook the floor and made her teeth rattle in her mouth. Ziva planted her hands at her hips. “How much longer is a little longer? You’ve been at it for months!”

With a sigh, Mr. Shirt and Tie checked his paperwork. “We’re scheduled to finish in…September.”

“September?” Ziva hadn’t meant for her voice to pitch so high. A few heads turned her way. Her blush deepened.

“I’m afraid so.”

That meant another two months of waking up at the crack of dawn to get a couple hours’ work in before the symphony next door began in earnest. It meant wandering the city and sketching in cafés so she didn’t waste her days.

She owed half a dozen commissions. Dexter, who’d found her the clients and negotiated the deals on her behalf, was going to kill her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Mr. Shirt and Tie. “Nothing I can do. Maybe if you talked to the client…” He inclined his head to one shoulder, gaze slipping past Ziva’s shoulder toward someone in the doorway.

Ziva braced for some ball-busting Wall Street hotshot. Their breed had infected all her favorite haunts. In the mornings, she had to duck out of the way to avoid their self-satisfied jogging while she smoked her one cigarette of the day. In the evenings, they spilled out of bars, Happy Hour-ing away the stress of gambling with other people’s money.

What Ziva found behind her was much, much worse.

“Is there a problem?” Standing at least six feet tall on a pair of impractical suede pumps and draped in a fringed Chanel suit, Yvonne Barros looked up from her cellphone with an expression of indifferent bemusement. When she saw Ziva, her polite but cool smile froze on her lips.

Her hair was a warmer shade of blonde than Ziva recalled and she’d taken to wearing gray pearls instead of diamonds, but she was otherwise unchanged. Eight years had done nothing to diminish her statuesque beauty.

Ziva thought of tornadoes ravaging all in their path. She thought of painting one in the shape of a woman. “Hello, Yvonne.”

Hearing her name aloud seemed to snap Yvonne from her trance. “Hi. I don’t—”

Oblivious, Mr. Shirt and Tie tried to interject. “Miss… Uh, I didn’t catch your name?”

“Ziva,” both she and Yvonne said at the same time.

A small smile crested on Yvonne’s lips at the coincidence. Ziva looked away.

“Ms. Ziva was complaining about the noise, ma’am. She lives next door and—”

“Really?” Yvonne’s frosty features registered surprise.

Ziva shrugged. “Small world.” She glanced down at herself, never more aware of her shabby attire than when she was around people who knew the old her. Not only were her clothes well-worn, but they were also dappled with paint, to say nothing of her stained fingertips. She tucked as much of her hands as could fit into the pockets of her jeans. “It’s not a big deal. You do what you gotta do. Cool place, by the way,” she added, for Yvonne’s benefit. “Bet it’s gonna be great when it’s finished.” Whatever else needed doing seemed perfunctory to her, but she was no interior designer.

Yvonne opened her mouth to speak but seemed to think better of it. “Thank you,” she answered after a longer beat than the compliment called for.

Silence settled between them. It would have been awkward without an audience. With it, Ziva felt both cornered and so far at sea that she could barely glimpse the shoreline.

“I’ll get out of your way. Nice to see you again, Yvonne.”

“You too.” Yvonne spoke softly and with equally little conviction.

As she dashed into the hall, Ziva breathed in the familiar earthy scent of Portrait of a Lady, Yvonne’s signature scent. She was the only woman Ziva knew who wore it—possibly because the price of a bottle retailed for upward of three hundred dollars, more likely because Yvonne could never follow the crowd.

If she didn’t stand out, she’d once told Ziva, she didn’t matter. If only Ziva had known that such ruthless determination surpassed friendship too.

“Bye,” Ziva said.

Silhouetted in the entry of her new apartment, Yvonne held herself with the kind of elegance Ziva had long since stopped aspiring to. It was a relief to close the door.

Ziva leaned against the wood, blood pounding her ears. Her hands shook. Eight years. She’d made it eight years in the bloated small town that was the Upper West Side without crossing paths with Yvonne once.

Her synapses firing in all directions, Ziva was assailed by a dozen different thoughts at once. With all the money she’d injected into refurbishing the next-door loft, Yvonne clearly intended to move in at some point. Could Ziva move out in time to avoid becoming her neighbor? Would that be too much like fleeing? Did she care?

She might not have known the answer to those other questions, but as far as caring, all it had taken for old hurt to resurface was one look at Yvonne.

Her forehead met the wood with a dull thump. Of all the gin joints in all the world… The woman who had destroyed her business had to move into this one. Right next door too, and so close that Ziva would hear her footsteps on the landing whenever she came or went. And perhaps that might prove bearable in time, if not for the torch she’d once carried for Yvonne, a senseless, adolescent crush that betrayal should have long snuffed out.

Ziva pushed away from the door. The standing mirror propped beside it revealed a dark-haired woman with round eyes, a pointed nose and too-small chin. No great beauty. Certainly not someone who could attract Yvonne’s interest, now that she’d stopped being her competition. Ziva took comfort in that.

She was no longer the trusting college grad who’d blundered so badly through her father’s legacy. She had grown up, become an artist. As she passed the loop of the apron over her head and tied it at the waist, she told herself she was in no danger from the likes of Yvonne Barros. In fact, she didn’t care at all about her new neighbor.

Now that the ruckus had temporarily died down, she had allegories to paint.