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“I’m just a civilian now,” I said.

She turned with military precision and I followed.

We went into an office that had large barred windows set within three of its walls. The desk was pale green, constructed from plastic of some sort. There was a computer on a side table and a blue blotter with not even a pencil in sight. Laur—that’s what I called iher when we worked together—had always been inordinately neat, maybe even a little obsessive.

She sat behind the desk and I took the hot seat across from her.

She gave me a big smile.

“What brings you out here, civilian?” she asked.

“Looking for a woman.”

“You always were.”

“Work,” I said.

Lauren liked me. I never saved her life or even taught her very much, but I treated her like a partner, and not all men did that on the force in our day—today either.

“Name?” she said.

“Lana Ruiz.”

Lauren cocked her head to the side like she used to when we were partners and my voice modulated when talking on the phone to a lover or at least a potential lover.

“No,” I said to her unspoken question. “She has information about something that I need for a job.”

“What?”

“Believe me, darling, you don’t want to know.”

Lauren let a beat or two pass and then reached into a drawer, from which she extracted a phone receiver. Beyond my line of sight she entered a few digits and then said, “Have Lana Ruiz brought to my meeting cell.”

She put the phone away and considered me.

I honestly had no idea what she was thinking. Even though I love the company of women, I can’t claim to understand them very well.

“My husband left me over you,” she said after quite some time of silence.

“Say what?”

“He said that every time I came off a shift with you I was all sexy and did things that I never had before. He said he didn’t realize it at the time, but after you and I were reassigned to new partners he said I hardly even touched him and when I did there was no feeling to it.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“You made me realize something about myself, Joe.”

“What’s that, Laur?”

“Well.” She hesitated. “It’s like this. I’m definitely a heterosexual woman. I like men’s parts and how they use them. But the world that men imagine themselves living in has nothing to do with the world I know. Their football games and physical violence are just stupid to me. And even though you were one of those men, when we were together in that cruiser I could imagine a life in a world maybe a hundred years from now where my ideas and some man’s might be the same.”

Our eyes met and the phone sounded. Lauren picked up the receiver, listened, and then put the phone away.

“Get in the elevator and it will take you to Lana. When you’re through, knock on the door and the guards will take you back to clearance.”

“What about what you were telling me?” I asked.

“That was then,” she explained.