"I'm remodeling."

"Un huh."

We sat opposite each other, and I waited while he took two cardboard cups of coffee out of one of the bags. We uncapped the coffee, spread napkins, and dug into the donuts.

We were good enough friends that we didn't have to talk while we ate. We ate the Boston creams first. Then we divided up the remaining four jelly donuts. At two donuts down he still hadn't noticed my hair, and I was left to wonder what my hair usually looked like. He also hadn't said anything about the mess Morelli had created while searching my apartment, which gave me pause to consider my housekeeping habits.

He ate his third donut more slowly, sipping his coffee, savoring his donut, sipping his coffee, savoring his donut. "I hear you made a recovery yesterday," he said between savors.

He was left with just his coffee. He eyed my donut, and I protectively drew it closer to my edge of the table.

"Don't suppose you'd want to share that," Gazarra said.

"Don't suppose I would," I replied. "How did you find out about my recovery?"

"Locker room talk. You're prime conversation these days. The boys have a pool going on when you'll get boinked by Morelli."

My heart contracted so hard I was afraid my eyeballs might pop out of my head. I stared at Gazarra for a full minute, waiting for my blood pressure to ease out of the red zone, imagining capillaries bursting throughout my body.

"How will they know when I'm boinked?" I asked through clenched teeth. "Maybe he's boinked me already. Maybe we do it twice a day."

"They figure you'll quit the case when you get boinked. The winning time is actually when you quit the case."

"You in the pool?"

"Nope. Morelli nailed you when you were in high school. I don't think you'd let a second boinking go to your head."

"How do you know about high school?"

"Everybody knows about high school."

"Jesus." I swallowed the last piece of my last donut and washed it down with coffee.

Eddie sighed as he watched all hope for a part of the donut disappear into my mouth. "Your cousin, the queen of nags, has me on a diet," he said. "For breakfast I got decaf coffee, half a cup of cardboard cereal in skim milk, and a half grapefruit."

"I take it that's not cop food."

"Suppose I got shot," Eddie said, "and all I had in me was decaf and half a grapefruit. You think that'd get me to the trauma unit?"

"Not like real coffee and donuts."

"Damn straight."

"That overhang on your gun belt is probably good for stopping bullets, too."

Eddie drained his coffee cup, snapped the lid back on, and dumped it into the empty bag. "You wouldn't've said that if you weren't still pissed at the boinking stuff."

I agreed. "It was cruel."

He took a napkin and expertly flicked powdered sugar off his blue shirt. One of the many skills he'd learned at the academy, I thought. He sat back, arms folded across his chest. He was 5' 10" and stocky. His features were eastern Slavic with flat pale blue eyes, white blond hair, and a stubby nose. When we were kids he lived two houses down from me. His parents still live there. All his life he'd wanted to be a cop. Now that he was a uniform he had no desire to go further. He enjoyed driving the car, responding to emergencies, being first on the scene. He was good at comforting people. Everyone liked him, with the possible exception of his wife.