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The morning was growing stronger, but the feeling of night hadn’t moved off yet.

“I don’t know what to tell ya,” I told her. “You understand these things better than I do. I believe that. But I know for a fact the danger that Twyla’s facing, and I will keep lookin’ to find her until it either catches her or she gets away.”

Realizing, not for the first time, that an important decision wasn’t up to her, Aurilia said, “I can tell you one thing…”

I got home at a few minutes to nine that morning. Leaf was asleep in my bed, naked and on top of the covers. I sat next to her thinking about Arman Babylon, his crushing weight settling down beside his long-suffering and now-dead wife.

“Hi,” Leaf said, sitting up.

“Hey.”

She grabbed me by the lapels and leaned in, sniffing.

“I haven’t taken a shower for two days,” I apologized.

“I don’t care if you’re clean. I’m just tryin’ to see if there’s some other woman on my man.”

“And what if I started rubbin’ my nose all over you? Would I smell aftershave or alfalfa sprouts?”

“Not this mornin’.”

“But some other time?”

“Take off your clothes and lie down with me, fool.”

I did as she requested, but we didn’t fall asleep or make love. Instead, we talked about my long days and the case of the missing daughter.

When I’d finished telling the tale she asked, “Why didn’t you tell the singer about what happened to her daughter’s boyfriend?”

“Because you should never tell people the whole truth.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not right.”

Leaf stretched, looked deeply at me, and then stretched again.

In my sleep there were pedestrian sounds: the clink of a glass put down on porcelain, the tap running, a door closing, a commode’s flush, the scuff of a chair’s leg on the wooden floor. A siren started up maybe four blocks away, and then there was a kiss on each of my eyelids.

“What time is it?” I asked, with eyes still closed.

“Afternoon,” the woman I loved more and more said.

“I got to get to work.”

“Take a shower and come have some coffee wit’ me first.”

“You drink coffee now?”

“Sometimes.”

Forty minutes later, sitting at the red table for two, looking down on Montague Street, Leaf and I had not said another word, but that’s not to say there was no conversation going on.

She was looking at me, not in the eyes but down around my chin. Now and then her face scrunched up a little—by turns wondering, denying, deciding, and then changing her mind. These were subtle expressions that could be easily denied. But like the Delphic muse, Tina Turner, Leaf Alyssandra Morton didn’t do easy.

“What?” I asked.

“What you said after I smelled you.”