There was something in the tone of her voice that made me apprehensive. “Just tell me,” I said. “Did something happen?”

She was turned toward me, right arm along the back of the bench, and now she crossed her left ankle over her right knee. She was wearing cargo shorts again, and her legs weren’t shaved. For some reason, noticing that made me notice—really notice—the rest of her. Her hair was dark brown and cut very short on the sides, longer on top like a guy. She had little black gauges in her earlobes, and up along her right ear a line of silver studs. There was an easy boyishness to the way she moved. Yesterday I had thought she was cute but dismissed her because she was a girl. Today I just thought she was cute—exactly the way I might feel about any boy. It was confusing. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever looked at another girl that way before.

“A couple months ago,” she said, “I came over to help your grandma with her dishwasher. It’s pretty old and sometimes it acts up. Anyway, I got there and she had totally forgotten she’d called me. I know that can happen when you get older, so I didn’t think too much about it. But there have been other things—little things—but together they make me worry about her. Like, she told me she couldn’t find Analemma’s leash one day, which is weird because it’s always on the hook by the front door. I was there that morning so I helped her look, but I only found it on accident. She’d put it in a kitchen drawer. For a while she was acting a little strange. Not only forgetful—sort of like she wasn’t sure what was going on. She asked me when Matty was coming home for dinner a couple of months ago, when she knows he doesn’t live here. She’s better now, but I think it’s a little dangerous for her out there all alone, you know?”

I realized that the tattoos on her arms were koi fish swimming in a yin-yang pattern. “She has a dog,” I said. “She’s not alone, exactly.”

Steph gave me a strange look, as if I wasn’t getting it but she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I flushed and glanced out at the Safeway parking lot. The cars were gleaming in the sun; it was getting hotter. This conversation with Steph about my grandmother was the least sexy topic I could imagine, but inside me I felt a tiny unfurling, as if a tender green shoot were turning toward the sun.

“Analemma is a great dog, but unfortunately she can’t call 911,” Steph said.

“You think she needs to call 911 a lot?” I said, suddenly worried.