“This is good,” he said.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I told him. “I haven’t gotten all culinary in my dotage. Goon made the coffee, just like he made this sandwich. Do you want some? Because I’m pretty much done.”

“No, I already ate.”

But after a moment he took one of the sandwich quarters still on my plate.

“How come you never got the nickname Stomach Riddell?” I asked him.

“Same reason no one calls you Smart Mouth Coppercom.”

“But those would be good gangster names.”

He pretended to think about it, then shook his head.

“No, they’re not tough enough,” he said.

“Well, there you go. And all along I’ve been thinking that they were supposed to be silly.”

“Silly would be if either of us actually were gangsters.”

“I’d make a great gangster,” I told him.

I gave him my tough girl look, but all he did was laugh.

“So what brings you by on a Sunday afternoon?” I asked.

“Are you up for a road trip?”

He had a twinkle in his eye that was so familiar, I actually got a little pang of nostalgia that rose up from deep in my chest. A melancholy for how things had once been when we were young and full of energy and . . . well, more mobile on my part.

“Unless you and Daniel already have plans,” he added.

“No, I’m on my own today,” I said. “Mona stayed overnight, but she left right after breakfast.”

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell him that I’d broken up with Daniel last night. We usually shared all the details of our respective love lives. Maybe it was because I was the one who’d done the breaking up and I knew that, two years after the fact, he still carried a confused hurt over Tanya having dumped him the way she had, just like that, out of the blue. I guess I didn’t want him to side with Daniel, who’d undoubtedly been as confused when I did the same thing to him.

“So, where are you bound?” I asked.

“The Custom House Hotel in Sweetwater. The Knotted Cord’s playing there. One of their fiddlers sprained her arm last night, and they asked me to fill in for the matinee and evening shows.”

I couldn’t help the surprised look I gave him. Not that he was asked to fill in, because lord knows, he’s one of the best fiddlers this city’s ever produced. No, it was his asking me if I wanted to come along.

We used to do this all the time, go on little road trips to out-of-the-way towns and villages up the line where he’d have some gig. That stopped when he moved to L.A., and hadn’t come up again since his return a few years ago.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.