There are only three at the table this morning because young Teddy Boyle, our spiky-haired live-in computer guru, has not yet emerged from his dungeon. Too much late-night fun, apparently. Well, he’s of a late-night age, either twenty-one (so he says) or eighteen (so Naomi thinks) or barely sixteen (my theory). Whatever, he’s missing the muffins, so to speak.

For the better part of half an hour there are no more than a dozen words exchanged between us. Naomi, never a casual conversationalist, concentrates on her morning papers: the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which she studies in exactly that order. Nothing casual about it, although she seems to enjoy the process as she scans and absorbs the text. Among her many talents, virtual retention of everything she sees, hears and reads. Not word-for-word, but the essence thereof. On many a case her remarkable memory has dredged up some small, useful item of information from weeks or months or even years ago. A notice of alternate parking on a particular street in the South End. Who was third runner-up in a celebrity fishing tournament in Nantucket. A warehouse fire in Jamaica Plain. A hit-and-run in Chelsea. Lives have been saved because of what she remembers, villains apprehended. In one very disturbing case a prominent sociopath took his own life-and if you knew the circumstances, and the unspeakable crime he committed, you’d undoubtedly agree he made the right choice.

While Naomi reads, uploading data, Mrs. Beasley, silent as usual, methodically fills in Sudoku squares using a felt-tip pen, never lifting her eyes from the page. Left to myself I’d probably have the TV on to one of the morning chat shows, but there are house rules about television, so I content myself with the Globe’s entertainment section, improving my cultural awareness about the hottest new reality show.