Ms. Wu sent me away, which was fine with me. I took a cup of tea out to the front stoop, sat in the ruddy light of the setting sun, and tried to think sensibly about Rico’s offer. Unless Tick-Tick recovered immediately, it seemed as if I could ignore it. My first responsibility was to make tea and run errands for my partner, or whatever needed to be done for the duration. What’s more, looked at simply as a job, the last thing I wanted to do was police surveillance, or anything like the things I’d already done with Rico. I didn’t like the suspense. So I didn’t understand why I kept coming back to the question. It was as if I’d flipped a coin on it, come up negative, and found myself wanting to make it best two out of three.

Ms. Wu leaned out of the window above me and called, “Come on up.” So I abandoned all the speculation that I’d already decided three times was pointless, anyway.

By the time I reached the second floor, Ms. Wu’s bag was packed, and she was towelling her hands at the kitchen sink. She seemed a bit pale and pinched. Tick-Tick looked no better, but no worse. There was a lingering smell of some light, sharp-smelling incense, and red votive candles still burned in holders on each windowsill.

“I would have told Tick-Tick my diagnosis and let her pass it on to you, but this will save her the wear and tear,” said Ms. Wu. “Not to mention the annoying questions that she won’t be able to answer.” Her face was calm, but not smiling; I was nervous enough to think that she might have steeled herself to this. I sat down next to the couch, where I could watch her and the Ticker both.

“Did she treat you bad?” I asked the Ticker.

“Heavens, no,” she answered, in the pale version of her usual manner that seemed to be all she had the strength for. “Not even one of her wretched fortune cookies, though if she’d offered me a nice ginger jelly for being a good girl and not crying over the needle, I assure you I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Oh, hell! I should have remembered to bring you some when I went to fetch her.”

“I suppose you were distracted,” the Ticker said, pretending to be wounded. I could have enlarged on the pantomime, if she hadn’t been folded up just then with a cough that made her clutch at her chest. “My, that hurts,” she croaked when she’d finished.

“I felt as if someone had taken a pair of tongs out of the freezer and used them on my heart. But all I said was, ‘Then shut up, for God’s sake, and you won’t cough so much.”