Marcus Tate comes to the city on a Saturday. He drives himself — three rescue dogs in the back of the truck, which means dinner has to be somewhere Gideon can meet him, which means the diner on Girard, which is a place Marcus likes because it has been open since 1947 and has not updated the menu since approximately 1974, which he considers a virtue.
They sit in the booth in the back. Marcus orders eggs and bacon at six PM without any apparent awareness that this is unusual. Gideon orders coffee and a sandwich. The waitress knows Marcus by name, which means he comes here more often than the drive from South Jersey should make practical.
"You look different," Marcus says, when the waitress leaves.
"You said that the last time we talked."
"Last time I said you sounded different. Now I'm saying you look different."
"Different how?"
Marcus studies him in the unhurried way of a man who has spent thirty years reading people and has no particular reason to rush now that he is retired. "Like you got some air," he says finally. "Like some window opened."
Gideon drinks his coffee.
"The journalist," Marcus says.
"I haven't—"
"You don't have to tell me it's her. I can see it." He cuts his eggs. "How careful are you being?"
"I'm always careful."
"That's not what I asked." He puts down his fork. "She covers the crime beat in a city where you are the crime beat, Gideon. I need you to tell me you understand the specific mathematics of that."
"I understand it."
"Do you understand it in the way that you've considered and accepted the risk, or do you understand it in the way that you know the words and are choosing not to fully feel them?"
It is, as always with Marcus, an exact question. He does not ask approximate things. He never has.
"Both," Gideon says. "Probably."
Marcus picks his fork back up. He eats for a moment. He looks out the window at Girard Avenue doing its Saturday thing — busy, loud, the particular density of a Philadelphia neighborhood that is genuinely alive.
"She's going to figure it out," he says. Flat. Just a fact.
"She already has."
Marcus goes still. He does not move for a second. Then he looks at Gideon with an expression that has several things in it at once, and all of them are complicated.
"And you're still having dinner with her."
"Yes."
A long pause. Marcus drinks his coffee. He looks at the table. He does something that Gideon has seen him do twice before in sixteen years, which is let himself say nothing for long enough that you understand he is choosing every word.
"Are you in love with her?" he asks.
Gideon holds his cup. He looks at it.
"I don't know," he says. "But I think I might be trying to find out."
Marcus nods. He picks up his fork.
"Eat your sandwich," he says.