“And, Dan, not to sound stuck up, because I’m really not, but she’s not the only one,” he says, raising his boxy shades to glance at me. “You should see the receptionists at the front desk making goo-goo eyes whenever I walk by. I mean, when did I suddenly become so attractive to Chinese women? Maybe it’s one of those deals where foreign women find dumpy-looking Americans hot because they don’t know any better.”

“Or maybe you’re handsomer than you think, Larry.”

“Thanks, but I know what I am. I’m penetrating. I’m pithy. I’m down to earth in a good way-but handsome? No, that’s not me.”

“Maybe you’re handsomer than you look,” I suggest.

Click. Counterclick.

“That’s deep, Dan. I’ll think about that. I always think about what you say. But, to be frank, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s as if Mary worships the ground I walk on.”

“Or maybe she worships your passport.”

“Pffft!” Mary has opened another Coke can for Larry. The miracle of carbonation seems to catch her by surprise every time.

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Larry says, taking a sip. “I’m not so vain that I’m not weighing that as an active possibility. In fact, I’d like you to help me weigh that, if you wouldn’t mind. I could use an extra set of judgments.”

But now, as though she’s caught the tenor of our conversation, Mary wants to put in some comments of her own. “Professor no eat!” she tells me, a complaint and a question all at once.

“I’m eating, dear,” Larry says. “I’m not eating sea cucumbers, it’s true, but I’m eating a balanced diet of shortbread cookies with lemon icing and shortbread cookies dipped in fudge. Maybe it’s not your idea of a balanced diet, but I’m a big boy. You don’t need to mutha me.”

Where have I heard this affectionate brand of squabbling before? It comes to me: in the kitchen of Larry’s parents, Rivie and Sam, back in Lynn, Massachusetts -the same mix of exasperated fondness. They would chuckle for the benefit of any onlookers as they sparred.

Click. Counterclick.

I think I figure out where the piney scent is coming from. I’m not positive, but does Mary have one of those Little Tree Air Fresheners hanging around her neck for a pendant?

Scrunching forward so that he resembles the wrinkled old elephant in Babar, Larry offers me the box of Girl Scout cookies. Again I decline. But again Larry dislikes having his generosity stymied. “Here, take some cab fare, then. Who knows how much you’re putting out racing all over town? Mary, will you give Dan some bills from my wallet? And help yourself to some more while you’re at it,” he tells her.

She’s become very familiar with his wallet in the past two days, I note. I refrain from saying anything. It’s his money; he can do what he wants, especially with that quarter-million-dollar icicle/truck settlement.

Larry settles back on his chaise, disappointed that I keep refusing his money. My failure to press the advantages life affords me has always been a source of chagrin to him, a symptom of my white-glove upbringing.

Mary leans forward with her air freshener dangling and starts probing me for hard data about her affianced. After all, it’s a two-way street, this marriage thing. She has a checklist to satisfy, too.

“He big-ah boss, yes?”

“I’m not a big boss,” says Larry, who seems to have less trouble understanding her than I do, maybe because of his own speech issues. “It’s just that she has to know that what I say goes. Like, if I say we go breakfast, we go breakfast. She has to do it my way. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, do you?”

“He-ah very big professor?” she tries again.

“They don’t come any bigger,” I confirm. “In fact, forget professor, he’s a commissioner! Back in Florida he’s like the world commissioner of pool chairs! He’s practically chairman of his condo association, and that’s one nasty campaign to engage in, am I right, Larry?”

Larry cracks his knuckles. “I’m thinking of maybe running sometime,” he allows.

“What’d I tell you?” I crow. “Chairman Larry!”

“Chairman Larry,” Mary says, satisfied. She seems to admire the sound of this very much.

“Hope you don’t mind a little ribbing,” I say to Larry as an aside.

“It’s your nickel, you’re entitled,” he says, cracking his knuckles again, an activity that sounds a little like muffled gunfire.

As if reading my mind, Larry embarks on a fond reminiscence of the weaponry he used to carry. I don’t listen to a lot of it, because, again, I don’t want to get sucked in. I can be of most assistance to him if I maintain my distance. When I tune back in, he’s talking about the gun he used to have that was in the shape of a wallet. If a perp demanded your wallet, you pulled it out like you were complying, and then you shot him dead.

“I really miss my firearms,” he says, sighing, as though talking about an offspring who left for college in Hawaii. “I carried a gun for eighteen years. I feel very naked without a weapon. In particular I miss my.25-caliber jet fire Beretta. Very small, fit inside my palm. It was so highly concealable I used to take it to bar mitzvahs and weddings.”

“You’re telling me you took a revolver to bar mitzvahs and weddings?”

“No, you misheard me.”

“Good! For a minute I thought you said-”

“I said I took my Beretta to bar mitzvahs and weddings. My revolver I reserved for brises.”

Picturing Larry in a yarmulke and semiautomatic…

Then: Ow my God, yarmulke, it’s Friday, I forgot I’m supposed to go to Friday-night Shabbat services. I make my good-byes while I hurriedly gather my stuff.

“I didn’t bother making a reservation for you, assuming you wouldn’t be interested in going,” I tell him.

“Why the hell are you going, you don’t mind my asking.”

“I’m meeting my one contact from home-friend of a friend at the embassy here named Izzy somebody.”

“Have you already told me who he is? I can’t think of it right now.”

“Do you remember the first season of Survivor?” I ask him. “That sleazebag Richard Hatch who walked off with a mil?”

“No, but that’s okay. I don’t do popular culture.”

“Anyway, my friend is the federal prosecutor who convicted Hatch afterward for not paying taxes on his winnings,” I tell him. “I went to the case. Did a brilliant job. Nailed the guy for procuring a second passport and plotting to skip the country with his Argentine boyfriend.”

“And this prosecutor’s friend at the embassy can help us how?”

“Not sure yet,” I say. “I’m just following any leads I have.”

“And how do you happen to be friends with this particular prosecutor?”

I decide not to tell him that it was his connection, in a way. After Larry tried and failed to get me in hot water with the FBI years ago, I bumped into a guy at a party who would have been the one to prosecute me, if the FBI had found me suspicious in any way. The guy and I bonded over dinner, joking about it the rest of the evening, and now we go kayaking together. But why should I bother Larry with details? I can play mysterious, too. I look over his white shoulders and chest, innocent as heavy cream.

“You might want to consider using some kind of sunscreen,” I reply.

I hand the cabbie the Chinese directions Izzy faxed me and soon am weaving crosstown. Four dollars or forty-five minutes later, I’m let out in front of an old-fashioned student union-more cement than glass-but the receptionist in the rotunda indicates that the makeshift synagogue is at the other end of campus. Rather than give me directions in Chinese, she takes me by the sleeve and tugs me along through about a hundred yards of corridors into a courtyard, around some statuary, and up three floors of another building. Okay, this is more like it for an expat Jewish service-a couple of threadbare rooms off a college library.

Three senses immediately tell me it’s the right place: 1. Sound. “You had your baby!” says an Australian-accented, glamorous older woman in leopard-print scarf who’s bear-hugging another woman. 2. Sight. A couple of well-dressed gentlemen are pointing at the sky outside the window, quarreling about whether the sun has officially set. 3. Smell. Burning toast. Who overdid the bagels?