“No, you haven’t. Go home and think about it. But for God’s sake don’t take too long.”

I stood up and walked past her, down the hallway, through the dining room, to the bright, pleasant parlor. I stopped at the door. “Why did you become a cop?” I asked her, though I hadn’t meant to.

“My dad was one,” she answered promptly.

“My dad,” I said, taking care to get it right, “was a division vice president for a company that designed medical appliances.”

“Did he do it well?”

I blinked. “I think so.”

“That’s the difference, then. Let me know what you decide.”

Before I could think of an answer, I was on the other side of the door, and it was closed.

•

I wandered around town for an hour or two (how long were they? How could I tell?), thinking. To help me think, I bought a fish taco at a stand near Chrystoble and Delight. The guy who ran it, a tall, thin human with brown hair and dark eyes under tortoise-shell glasses and the kind of long, bony face that a lot of women like, fried the fish while I waited, and gave me my pick of other ingredients. It was, as best I could tell, authentically Mexican, but his accent was authentic Eastern European, and his faded T-shirt was lettered in Cyrillic. The fish was absolutely fresh.

“Where’s this from?” I asked, gesturing at the fish.

“From the dock. I buy them there in the morning, and I keep them very cold. It is terrible when they are not fresh.”

“What dock?”

He looked over the tops of his glasses at me. “The one on the shore. These are ocean fish. I would not use river fish.”

I’d heard rumors about this—that Bordertown was, on some days, in some neighborhoods, when the wind was right, an oceanfront property—but I’d never seen it for myself. I said so.