“Kid, don’t scare me like that.” His voice was rough silk, a little sharp with alarm, but already welcoming. She came closer, and he handed her one of the sacks—heavy, filled with cans and bottles. “Sorry I’m late. The market was crazy.”

He unlocked the door and stood aside to let her in first, a bit of unconscious courtesy or chauvinism all out of proportion to who they were, what they did.

“Hot cocoa?” He pulled a box out of the sack. She smiled and nodded. “You’re here early. What, being roomies with the hooker wasn’t quite the picnic you thought it might be?”

“She’s just fine.” Robby’s ambivalence about Velvet melted instantly under the heat of Jim’s disapproval. “It was nice to have a guest. I enjoyed it.”

“Oh, really.” He put blue cups of water in the microwave. “No accounting for taste. What’d you do with her, give her the keys and tell her not to steal anything over a thousand?”

“Just because you and I are thieves doesn’t mean everyone is,” she countered. The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

“She’d screw a priest for bus fare and you know it. Have a cookie.”

Store-bought and not quite up to homemade standards, no matter what the advertising said. She licked crumbs from her lips.

“Heard from Mark?” She took another cookie from the box. “We need some more home cooking around here.”

“He’s taking his physics and literature finals this week. You know how he gets at the end of the semester. He swears he’ll never steal again as long as he gets A’s on the tests, then next thing you know he’s pulling twenties out of somebody’s backpack in lab class. The kid’s incorrigible.” Jim’s smile faded like an old photograph. “He could have been good, you know. Really good.”

“He doesn’t have it,” Robby said. “The touch. The patience. You know that.”

The microwave binged for attention. Jim turned away and mixed cocoa, then handed her a cup breathing thick milky steam. She stripped off her gloves and wrapped her cold fingers around it gratefully.

“I know,” he said. “You’re the only one I know who does have it. The rest of them, they’re good and lucky, but they’ll get popped. Not you. Never you.”

“You’re jinxing me.”

“Maybe.” He leaned against a counter and watched her, smiling. He had on his professorial look today: a turtleneck sweater, a tweedy jacket with patches on the elbows, conservative slacks. All he needed was a thick book of literature, and the coeds would swarm. “Maybe the hooker’s all the jinx you need.”

“I’m sorry—”