And what difference does it make if the guy gets even madder? What difference does it make at this point whether the guy is furious or calm, if he’s going to pull a trigger either way? Because pulling a trigger is obviously pretty easy for this guy. Does it every day. Including today, apparently. Right after a nice coffee.

Now of course there’s no choice.

He has to warn Emily.

He hates to drag her into this.

He can’t believe he has to do this.

He knows enough about relationships, about their fragility, to know this will be the end of it. Maybe he’ll survive this, somehow. Maybe she’ll survive it. But the relationship sure won’t. No decent girl likes to get involved with a guy who’s being chased by an assassin.

They’re in the honeymoon phase. Getting to know each other, enjoying each other. Long talks and moonlight and long kisses and wondrous sex. Getting to know each other’s brains and bodies and joys and likes and dreams.

Talk about the honeymoon being over. Coming to a crashing halt.

But there’s no choice. He has to protect her. And the first part of protecting her is warning her.

He takes out the phone, lifts it to his ear, preparing in his head what he’s going to say to her. How he’s going to say it to her.

And then, suddenly, he realizes.

Shit. He doesn’t know her phone number.

He can remember the words of his text exchanges with Emily. Whole sentences come back to him. But he can’t think of her phone number, because he’s never known it. It’s a dating custom, a little moment of promise, of intimacy—you hand your phone to the other person, and they put in their number for you. So he’s never actually dialed it.

No one knows anyone’s phone number anymore.

And at that little rented office space where she works, where she does freelance work, producing and delivering “content” for several websites, there’s no general number. It’s just a shared workspace filled with independent contractors. That’s the way of the world now. So he can’t reach her there either.

The panic rises in him.

Jesus, and all that thinking and worrying about Steve. He can’t reach Steve anyway because he doesn’t know his number. He can’t reach any of his friends. Not without his phone. He tries to think of Steve’s number. Summon it up out of the past. Not even close. The mindless convenience of technology. It’s fucked him!