“The reason I’m meeting my husband is to eat dinner,” I reply with a trace of irony, and I don’t want a tense time with yet another person today. “Is everything all right?”

“Maybe you should be the one telling me that.” His big voice suddenly booms painfully in my right ear. “How come you’re not with Bryce?”

My chatterbox chief of staff must have informed Marino about my refusing to get back into the car at Harvard Square, about my violation of protocol and reckless disregard for safety.

Before I can answer, Marino begins confronting me as if I’m a suspect in a crime. “You got out of the car about an hour and a half ago, were inside The Coop for maybe twenty minutes,” he’s saying. “And when you finally exited the store on Mass Ave? Where’d you go?”

“I had an errand on Arrow Street.” The sidewalks in the Yard form a brick spiderweb, and I find myself constantly making adjustments, taking the most efficient path, the quickest and coolest.

“What errand?” he asks as if it’s any of his business.

“At the Loeb Center, picking up tickets for Waitress, the Sara Bareilles musical,” I reply with forced civility that’s beginning to waver. “I thought Dorothy might like to go.”

“From what I hear you were acting as squirrelly as a shithouse rat.”

“Excuse me?” I stop walking.

“That’s the way it’s been described.”

“By whom? Bryce?”

“Nope. We got a nine-one-one call about you,” Marino says, and I’m stunned.

HE INFORMS ME THAT his police department was contacted about “a young guy and his older lady friend” arguing in Harvard Square about 4:45 P.M.

This young guy was described as in his late twenties with sandy-brown hair, blue capri pants, a white T-shirt, sneakers, designer sunglasses, and a tattoo of a marijuana leaf. The tattoo isn’t right but the rest of it is.

Supposedly the concerned citizen who called the police recognized me from the news, and it’s disturbing that my clothing description is accurate. I do in fact have on a khaki skirt suit, a white blouse, and tan leather pumps. Unfortunately it’s also correct I have a run in my panty hose, and I’ll strip them off and toss them when I get where I’m going.

“Was I mentioned by name?” I can’t believe this.

“The person said words to the effect that Doctor Kay Scarpetta was arguing with her pothead boyfriend and stormed out of the car.” Marino passes along another outrage.

“I didn’t storm. I got out like a normal person while he stayed behind the wheel and continued to talk.”

“You sure he didn’t get out and open the door for you?”