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the impression he thinks the same as you.”
    “Which is?”
    “I’m a woman, being silly.”
    I was taken aback. “I don’t think that, Catherine. The question is what you can do about—”
    “Assuming any of it is actually happening , right? That it’s not an attack of the vapors or some other charmingly feminine malaise?”
    “I’m just trying to be practical.”
    “Absolutely. Men are good at that.” She pushed her chair back decisively. “My friend’s looking after Ella and Isabella. She’s going to need to leave soon.”
    “So, John—what should she do?” Kristina’s voice was clipped. She was pissed at me, and not hiding it.
    I shrugged. I’d been intending to follow that up with something more helpful, but wasn’t given the chance.
    “Thank you for your time, John,” Catherine said.
    After telling the waitress to put the drinks on her account, she gave Kristina a peck on the cheek.
    “See you tomorrow night,” she said. “Nice to meet you,” she added to me. I’ve heard more convincing lies.
    As the two of them headed out to the sidewalk together, I got out my wallet and covertly put a five-dollar bill on the table.

Chapter 4
    When Catherine had disappeared up the street, Kristina turned to me. She had a look in her eye that I’ve seen her use on men in the bar, optimistic drunkards who’ve mistaken professional courtesy for a ticket to bed. The look works. The guys always elect to buy their next drink someplace else. Often in a different city altogether.
    “What?” I asked, though I knew.
    She kept glowering at me.
    “I just don’t get it,” I said. “All she has is a vague impression of maybe being followed. So she got spooked walking home on a few occasions a very long time apart—there’s not a woman in the city who couldn’t say the same. And a few guys.”
    “That doesn’t mean she’s—”
    “I’d be more convinced without the big gap, to be honest. I don’t know much about stalkers, but my impression is they tend to stick to the job at hand—not get distracted for a couple of presidential terms. What’d he do, set an alarm to remind himself to act crazy again after a decade-long vacation in normality?”
    “You were being snippy before she even got to that part.”
    “Possibly,” I admitted. “She’s not my type. You can’t dismiss every disagreement with a male as institutionalized sexism. And who has an account at a coffee shop, for Christ’s sake?”
    “Lots of people.”
    “Really?”
    “Around here, yes.”
    “Christ. Either way, you tip the waitress. Plus … her daughters’ names rhyme.”
    Kris cocked her head and stared at me ominously. “What?”
    I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say and didn’t want to keep trying to say it. “Let’s walk.”
    For a moment it seemed like she wasn’t going to follow, but eventually she did.
    After fifteen minutes of silence we wound up in the streets on the other side of Bleecker. Close, in fact, to where Catherine had been living in the late 1990s and where she claimed to have first sensed someone following her. I didn’t try to get Kris talking. I used to have two young sons. Still do have one, though I’ve seen him only once in the last three years, for reasons that are not entirely under my control. One of the few skills I’d started to develop before my marriage and family fell apart was the diffusion of unproductive conversations. Kids have far more focus and persistence than adults give them credit for, and may get a buzz out of the attention that conflict gains. Back them into a corner and they’ll go at you toe-to-toe, and so the trick is to stop banging that drum and try something else instead. It works with grown-ups too. I use the technique on myself, when the conversations in my head threaten to become repetitive or obsessed with events that I cannot go back and change.
    So rather than returning to Catherine Warren’s problem—about which I wasn’t sure more could be said—I