She let me drag her to a coffee shop a few blocks east. It was a beat little place with old stuffed couches and chairs, a few rickety tables, its back walls filled with shelves of musty used paperbacks. I was drinking a black coffee, decaf actually, since the sight of her gun aimed at my heart had given me enough of a start for the morning. Caroline was sitting across from me at one of the tables, her arms crossed, in front of her the cappuccino, pale, frothy, sprinkled with cinnamon, and completely untouched. Her eyes now were red and smeared and sad. There were a few others in the joint, young and mangy in their slacker outfits, greasy hair and flannel shirts, sandals. Caroline looked right at home. In my blue suit I felt like a narc.

“Do you have a license for that gun?” I asked.

“I suppose I need one, don’t I?”

I nodded and took a sip from my mug. “Take some sound legal advice and throw the gun away. I should turn you in, actually, for your own good, though I won’t. It goes against my…”

“You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” she said, interrupting me mid-sentence, and before I could answer she was already rummaging again in that little black handbag. I must admit I didn’t like seeing her hand back inside that bag, but all she brought out this time was a pack of Camel Lights. She managed to light her cigarette with her arms still crossed.

I looked her over again and guessed to myself that she was a clerk in a video store, or a part-time student at Philadelphia Community College, or maybe both. “What is it you do, Caroline?”

“I’m between things at the moment,” she said, leaning forward, looking for something on the table. Finding nothing, she tossed her spent match atop the brown sprinkled foam of her cappuccino. I had just spent $2.50 for her liquid ashtray. I assumed she would have preferred the drink. “Last month I was a photographer. Next month maybe I’ll take up tap dancing.”