Janet gave Alex a strange look. Alex gave her a pat under the table as if to say, “Don’t press me for details now, I’ll explain later.”

Ben, aware of the recent tragedy in Janet’s life, was always able to reach for some comedic banter. He tried to keep the mood from getting too somber, making jokes and gestures about old 1940s and 1950s horror films involving mummies. He got both Janet and Alex laughing.

“Hey, and then there was the old Steve Martin routine, ‘King Tut,’ ” he said. “You know? The song and dance. Check it out on YouTube if you’ve never seen it.”

“How’s it go again?” Alex asked. “ ‘When I die, don’t want nothing fancy but, gimme a royal sendoff like they gave to old King Tut.’

“ Ben laughed with them. “Something like that,” he said. “I think Steve Martin had a back-up group called the ‘Toot Uncommons’ for that.”

The laughter grew louder, along with a second and third round of Pabst. The mood grew goofier.

“How about this?” Alex said, moving her arms in the quirky parallel aloft motion of the ancient figures on the tombs. “Tell me where this is from. ‘All the swell paintings on the tombs,’ ” she sang, splitting up the other two with her brew-inspired riff on “Walk like an Egyptian.” “ ‘They do some silly dance, don’t you know…’ ”

She rolled her eyes and gave it her best Bangles-Susanna Hoffs imitation. The people at the next table applauded.

“Oh, my gosh,” said Janet. “Remember that goofy “Walk like an Egyptian” video with everyone walking around funny?”

“I was a little kid,” Alex said.

“I was in seventh grade,” Ben said. “I was in love with all four Bangles. Still am, actually.” Ben laughed. “I should have worn a fez tonight.”

They riffed on Egyptian stuff for a while, from Nefertiti to Nasser. Ben did his walking-like-an-Egyptian imitation with his arms and the women laughed again.

“When I was in Egypt, most people walked normally,” Janet said with a bittersweet grin. “Until Carlos’s car blew up.”

“I walked normally too, until I ran into a roadside bomb in Iraq,” Ben said. He tapped on his prosthesis. “But then I would never have met Alex if I hadn’t been rehabbing on the basketball court.”

“And I wouldn’t have been leading a normal life again if I hadn’t met Ben,” Alex said. “God works in strange ways, right?”

They walked back to the Calvert Arms later in the evening, a slight mist falling. Ben walked along with them, and both women felt as if they had exorcised a few demons over the evening. Two hours of beer and laughter with friends, and the world didn’t seem to be such a scary place. Janet felt better for being out of the apartment without incident, and Alex had calmed down a little concerning a possible trip to the Middle East.

Let’s see if it even happens, she told herself.

Alex watched the street just in case. She didn’t see any danger, but she continued to pay close attention to the configuration of cars on her block. That one car that she had been noticing recently, the battered old Taurus, wasn’t apparent when she did a quick scan of the block. A good sign perhaps. Potential stalkers, she reasoned, were illusory after all.

They arrived uneventfully at the entrance to Alex’s building. Ben said good-bye.

Janet and Alex entered the building.

“Ben’s great,” Janet said. “He seems like a really good guy.”

“He is.”

“You’re lucky to have him.”

“He’s a friend, not a boyfriend,” Alex answered.

“So he’s available?” Janet asked.

“Not for you.” She answered with half a laugh. “I might want to grab him for myself eventually.”

“Got it. Well, you’re still lucky to have him,” Janet said.

Against logic, Alex felt mildly taken aback by the question of Ben’s availability. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess he’s available. I know he’s got a job, goes to classes at law school on most evenings, and hits the gym two or three nights a week too.”

“Wow.”

“That doesn’t leave much time for dating, I’d guess.”

The two young women stood for a moment in the lobby. Alex felt a little ill-at-ease with the personal topics. “Anything else you need to do?” Alex asked.

“Like what?” Janet asked.

“Any shopping?” Alex asked. “Groceries, maybe? How you doing on supplies?”

“I could use a trip to the store,” Janet said.

It sounded like a reasonable request. But it was after 11:00 p.m.

“There’s a mini-mart a few blocks from here,” Alex said. “Would that work?”

“That’d work.”

Alex held up her car keys and indicated the steps from the lobby to the garage. “Let’s roll,” she said.

Their car traveled up the ramp out of the garage. The mist had grown heavier and Alex flicked on the windshield wipers. She pulled into a flow of light traffic and didn’t think much of the coincidence when a parked car pulled into traffic about fifty feet behind her.

Alex drove eight blocks and spotted an open meter in front of the small 7-Eleven. The parking spot was small, but Alex knew she could squeeze her car in.

Janet, feeling suddenly frisky, jumped out of the car before Alex could finish parking. “I’ll go ahead and start getting stuff,” she said. “See ya.”

Alex was about to object, but Janet gave her the crazy walk-like-an-Egyptian arm movement again, followed by something reminiscent of the Steve Martin “Tut strut.”

Still a little beery, they both laughed. Before Alex could suggest that she wait, Janet had walked through the automatic glass doors into the store.

Alex parked. Then, in her rearview mirror, past the wiper that cleared the heavy mist, she saw a car pull into a No Parking spot close to the mini-mart entrance. She saw a man jump out of the car, and a second man, the driver, quickly followed. They were a pair of big men in dark jeans and black hoodies. The first man, who wore an overcoat over his hoodie, took one glance in Alex’s direction and forged onward into the store. The second man followed close behind. Alex felt a jolt go through her. Terrible vibes. There was something wrong with the way they were dressed, the way they swaggered, the way they went into the mini-mart on Janet’s heels.

Heavy outer clothes. What were they hiding?

Alex’s mind went into overdrive. In the back of her mind, she was processing something. The headlights of their car had been in her rearview mirror since pulling out from the parking garage. Under normal circumstances, she would have thought nothing of that. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Then too there was something about the first man, the quick furtive nature of his movements, that Alex didn’t like. She was three-quarters of the way into the parking place when she placed him. He was the man she had once seen sitting in a parked car on the block where the Calvert Arms stood. Alex kicked herself for letting Janet out of her sight for even a few seconds.

Then Alex recognized the Taurus. It had been lurking somewhere, and she had missed it. She was furious.

She ripped the keys from her ignition and threw open the door. An oncoming car blasted her with the lights and honked, splashing her as it swerved and went around her. She ducked back in the rain. The driver yelled some profanity.

Alex gestured back with the New York City turn signal, Robert used to call it, and kept moving. She turned toward the store and ran. Her hand went to her weapon, but she didn’t draw it yet.

The suspicious car had left its doors unlocked but there was no one in it. Oh, Lord protect me, she thought. The wheels had been left pointing out and the driver had left a space of three feet between his car and the one in front. Standard smash-and-grab getaway parking position. Alex had seen it before and knew she would see it again.

She also knew what she was seeing here. Trouble with a capital T. Alex burst into the store, looking in every direction.