I left him sitting there at the window table with both of the cups.

By a quarter past two I was in Norwalk, at the public records office, asking for the notary registration entries from October 2021.

The clerk was a small woman with reading glasses hanging on a beaded chain.

She heard out my request and rolled her chair over to a green binder on the bottom shelf.

“October 2021,” she said.

“Notary registrations go by month and by name.

Which name?”