"Did you shut off my water?"
"No, sir. She did that. I don't touch the meters. I just got here with the shovel."
"Efrain," Georgine said, not loudly, and he stopped talking.
I took my phone out of my pocket. On the back of every district bill there's a twenty-four-hour number for water emergencies, and I had looked at that bill so many times in the past two months that I had the number nearly memorized. A dispatcher answered on the second ring. I told her my address. I told her that someone who did not work for the district had closed my curb stop and was refusing to open it. I told her my daughter had been in the shower. There was a pause on the line, a different kind of pause than the one I expected, and then she said, in a voice that had stopped sounding like a script, "Sir, did you say the person's name is Georgine Vandeventer?"
"That's right."
Another pause. "I'm sending a field tech now. He's twelve minutes out. Please do not attempt to operate the valve yourself. And sir, I'd recommend you call the police non-emergency line as well, so there's a report."
I called the police. Then, because I could think of nothing else useful to do, I went and stood next to my daughter on the porch, and put my hand very lightly on her shoulder, away from her neck, and we waited.