He shook his head. “Listen and report what?”

“Anything,” Valerie said. “Everything.”

* * *

Whitman sat across from Charlie at a night-owl truck stop diner on the hem of the city. It was open from midnight till eleven a.m., which made it a perfect place to have a clandestine meet. The rumbling outside from rigs arriving and departing was constant. With mounting pleasure, he watched Charlie devour first a plate of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and whole wheat toast, then a second course of flapjacks and link sausage. He himself drank tea, very dark, and ate a bowl of oatmeal with walnuts.

Charlie ate with the full-out gusto of an animal, but with the manners of a doyen of society. This dichotomy caused a dissonance whose energy he could feel. He bathed in it as if it were silver blue light from a star.

“I think we should get you to the ER,” he said, after a time.

“No,” she said, around a mouthful of syrup-drenched flapjack, “we shouldn’t.”

He knew what that meant. “You went off your meds.”

“I couldn’t take it anymore. The prednisone was nauseating me and the Imuran was making me anemic. After twenty minutes at the gym I’d have to go home and take a nap.”

“Takayasu’s is nothing to fool around with.”

“You’re not the one to tell me that.”

“If not me, who?”

She finished her last bite of sausage, put her knife and fork down, and pushed her plate away. Then she looked up at him. “Why do you think it’s your job to take care of me?”

“Why do you think?”

“Then you never should have left.”

“You threw me out!” He said this loud enough that the waitress paused in the act of pouring coffee and the patrons around them turned to stare.

“Nice going,” Charlie said under her breath.

“You are so infuriating sometimes.”

“That makes two of us.”

He leaned across the table. “Do you always have to have the last word?”

Staring at him, she remained silent. After a time, things returned to normal in the diner. Drivers paid their checks, got up, went out. Others came in, sat down, and ordered. A smattering of locals arrived, yawning and calling for coffee. The waitress moved into a higher gear. Whitman and Charlie were anonymous again.

“I appreciate you being so quick on the draw,” she said.

Whitman knew that was as close to a thank you as she was going to give him, so he accepted it graciously. “You’re welcome.”

Could that exchange have been more stilted? he asked himself. They sat like that for a time, watching each other warily, as adversaries will. Neither of them spoke. The homey odors of sizzling bacon and brewing coffee perfumed the air. They both seemed to have settled down into a kind of détente, which, Whitman supposed, was all that he could expect.

Charlie cocked her head. “I think you said something about a death in the family. Do I remember that right?”