The second lunch happened on a Tuesday.
I found out about it the same way I found out about the first one from Marcus, directly, that evening over the phone. This was, I understood, the thing about him that made everything simultaneously easier and harder: he told me. Not because I asked, not because he had been caught, but because he had decided months ago that honesty was the thing he owed me and he was incapable of setting that down even when the honest thing was inconvenient.
"She called this morning," he said. "She had a gap between depositions and asked if I wanted to grab something. I said yes."
I was at the West Village location doing end-of-day prep when he called. The closing routine covering the cases, wiping the counters, the methodical wind-down of a day's work continued ar
