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At one, a man in a canvas jacket asks about the estate jewelry, and when I turn to get the case key he takes hold of my wrist to keep my attention.

He doesn't get to finish his sentence.

Gage doesn't touch him. He doesn't say anything. He steps into the eighteen inches of space between the man and the counter and just stands there. The man's hand comes off me like my wrist was hot.

"I was asking about a brooch."

Nothing.

"I'll come back."

Nothing.

He leaves. The bell jingles cheerfully behind him.

"He doesn't even need to hit them most of the time," Cass says to me, sorting hangers. "He just stands there until they go. It takes longer. Feels worse."

Later, when the shop is quiet, I sit on the stool by the window with Sid on the sill beside me.

"Can I ask you something?"

His ear turns.

"Lila. Every time she gets near me you go weird. Since the first day. What is it?"

Sid doesn't look at me. He looks out at the street.

She has been

Then he stops.

Not the way a cat gets bored. The way something takes hold of him. He goes rigid all down his spine, claws out in the cushion, eyes gone wide and flat, and it lasts three full seconds before whatever it is lets go and he sags.

"Okay," I whisper. "Okay. I'm sorry. Forget it."

He doesn't move for a while after that.

I'm still rubbing the spot between his ears at three thirty when I look up through the window, across the square.

Lila's red coat.

She's supposed to be at work. She's been telling me all week she's slammed at work.

She's standing at the mouth of the alley behind the bakery, and she isn't alone. There's a tiny woman with her. Silver bun. Oatmeal cardigan buttoned to the throat. Reading glasses swinging from a beaded chain.

I know that chain.

Six days ago that woman floated outside my second-floor window and called me sweetheart.

Lila hands her something small.

And the old woman lifts her head, straight through the crowd and the traffic and the whole width of the square, straight to me in my own front window.

And she smiles and waves.

And then Lila turns around to see what she's waving at.

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