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“I know that too.”

She said it without judgment. The voice of someone who understood the architecture of being underestimated because she’d built versions of it herself.

“First time I’ve seen you good at your job,” she said, and the corner of her mouth moved.

“That’s a joke.”

“Half a joke.”

“Which half?”

“The half where I’m serious and pretending I’m not.”

I set my spoon down.

“I don’t know what to do with my face,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s honest. Give it a minute.”

I gave it a minute. She waited. The creek ran outside, thin and quiet, and the lamp hummed, and somewhere in the holding pen Sunday Ticket shifted his weight against a post.

“When are we going to sleep together?” she asked.

The question landed on the table between the chili pot and the water glasses with no preamble, no lead-in, no careful framing. She asked it the way she asked about the discharge coupling and the filing deadline and the re-application fee. A question that needed an answer. Next item.

“Tonight,” I said, swallowing. “If you want.”

She opened her mouth to respond.

Then she yawned.

Not a small, polite yawn. A full one — jaw wide, eyes squeezing shut, the kind that took over her whole face and arrived with the authority of eleven hours of sleep that apparently hadn’t been enough. She caught it halfway through, pressed her knuckles to her mouth, and the yawn escaped around her fingers anyway.

I started laughing.

She tried to say something through the yawn and the knuckle and the laugh that was now happening to both of us, and what came out was a sound that wasn’t a word in any language, and that made it worse.

“Compelling argument,” I said.

“Shut up.”

“I’m persuaded.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re yawning.”

She dropped her hand. Her eyes were wet from the yawn, and her mouth was still twitching, and she looked at me with the indignation of a woman who had just attempted to initiate a major life event and been betrayed by her own jaw.

“Maybe,” she said carefully, “I’m still catching up on sleep.”

“You’ve slept nine hours a night for five days.”

“Denver was two years.”