As I apply the pack to my earlobe I sit on the stool next to Pinky’s dog bed—I haven’t had the heart to throw it out—and flip through the pages of the current Retention Sciences Today. There is a “Where Are They Now?” item on Kong and Frankie Nickels—it’s the two-year anniversary, after all²⁹—and there is a piece on the growing violence of Azar’s men,³⁰ but the cover story, wouldn’t you know it, is none other than Detective Cheryl Nunes. The article makes no mention of Fritzy’s corruption and his many false arrests; it merely says she has been “newly appointed” in the Rat Burglar investigation. The production quality of the magazine is not high, and the light is poor, but Nunes appears to be a wiry woman with startling blue eyes and a complexion like washable glue. She looks cold; she is wearing a shabby trench and hunching up like a hardened frileuse even though the picture is taken indoors. Despite the cloudless sky outside the window she has an antique full-length umbrella hitched over her arm.

I’m just reading about her tracking down tithers in Graz³¹ and exterminating a tombaroli racket in Salerno³² when I detect outside my door, on the exhausted strip carpeting, the familiar light, clumsy, rhythmless footfalls. I can almost smell the odor of hot plastic and ink she will have from the photocopier; on her hair will be the burned chemical smell of industrial solvents that the university cleaning crew uses every night; her clothes will have the fuzzy suggestion of polyester and public transportation from riding the bus; there will be the polished leather, the rosemary and mint, the jungle-like perfume of her body. I can hardly wait.

There is enough time to stash the mag and my pills but I’m not able to jot down anything about pachylax in my journal. I am just able to slip it under the cushions on the sofa before the ringer buzzes. Frantically I check to make sure there aren’t any spare vials or hypos lying around, then I fling open the door and there, leaning against the frame, her black curls tightening in the humidity, is Charlie.

“Someone call in an order of ta’ l’Armla?” she says, dangling a plastic bag that radiates the scent of vegetables, peppery goat cheese, and eggs. But I also smell something sweet—honey icing and biscuit—and sure enough, from behind her back she produces another bag and makes a suggestive pendulum movement with it in front of her chest. “And if you’re good, I brought some figolli and a video of sailing disasters caught on tape.”

Charlie is naturally a gesture-maker, a gift-bearer, but she seems to have a nearly paranormal knack for bringing me home cooking whenever I’ve had a bad day. After the Khmer reliefs I got a steaming pot of some kind of spicy fish soup and rice whose name I can never remember but which rhymes with “Gargamel.” When I lost Entemena I discovered on my doorstep a plastic container with a note attached that said Charlie would be stuck in departmental meetings all night but here was “fennek” in a red wine sauce. On the night when the Rat Burglar stole the mediocre Inanna vases she showed up with a book on water safety skills and some kind of pastry things stuffed with dates.