Yaya wondered what difference the broadcasts might have made had they played cartoons instead. Same result, likely. She remembered one Looney Tunes sketch riffing on Dick Tracy, where at the climax, Daffy Duck mowed down mobsters with a clattering Tommy Gun. She’d giggled fiercely, not because the massacre was funny, but because it seemed absurd that they showed a murderous duck to kids. No wonder she was so screwed up.

But she couldn’t blame cartoons for cop tanks. Daffy Duck was innocent.

Her walk passed neighboring apartment buildings, a corner store that was dying out thanks to places like Jumpies, and a small deli. The last made her halt.

Magenta had access to Yaya’s every sense, and even if she didn’t know what scent was, she detected roasting pork. Yaya’s gut would start rumbling any moment.

“Well, what do you know.” She felt the man’s voice against her ear, his breath puffing past as he stopped beside her.

Bryant smiled through his beard. He looked much like he did on Saturday at Sunnyside Fertility Clinic, only now wearing a forest green beanie over his chestnut hair.

“You know, I call in for a mental health day, and when I stop here of all

places, I see you again,” he said. “What are the odds?”

Yaya meant to keep side-eying him, but instead her body pivoted on the spot to face him. “Mental health day?” she asked. “You don’t work retail, Bryant Peters.”

“You remember. Last name, too.”

She did, and she hated herself for it when she’d forgotten Doc’s name on Saturday and dozens of others before. He wasn’t special. He’d done nothing to deserve her rare moments of productive memory.

He chuckled, a warm sound that puffed white breath. “No retail; I’m in computers. Look, I know the street’s not much better for asking a woman out than the fertility clinic, but after the other day’s bungle—I don’t know, this feels serendipitous.”

“And what are you asking now?” Yaya couldn’t guess why she was listening to him. This wasn’t her usual. Their last meeting had been her usual, her tongue an icicle of disinterest. He hadn’t been the first man to look at her when she didn’t want, speak to her when she didn’t want.

Bryant’s eyes twinkled blue. “Walk with me. Talk with me, if you feel like it. We can head back to my place, hang out a bit. Get to know each other.”

Yaya’s blood didn’t run hot to speak with him, and she didn’t get those fuzzy idle thoughts she sometimes entertained when she saw a pretty woman.

Whatever the buzz inside, she’d never felt it beside a man before. She couldn’t be sure what she was doing.

She steeled her shoulders and stuck out her grandmother’s proud chin. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

That made Bryant laugh hard, and he raised his hands in surrender. “No strings, I swear.”

“Then thank the sex gods.”

His face screwed up at that, but he didn’t let strangeness stop him. “You like coffee?” he asked.