"What did you say?"
"I said thank you for telling me. And I said that I hoped he would get some sleep." Laverne turned her reading glasses over on their chain. "I didn't tell him it was all right. It's not all right. It's the second time in forty-one runs somebody has tried to take me off an airplane with one of these. The first time was a gate agent in Atlanta, two years ago, who decided I didn't look like the kind of person who'd be carrying anything important. She called a supervisor. The supervisor read the letter and walked me down the jet bridge himself. Both times, I had the letter in my hand." She looked up at Billie. "I always have the letter in my hand. That's what it is to be me in a place like this. You have the letter in your hand. You have it ready."
Billie said nothing. There was nothing that would not have been too small.
"But I'll tell you what I'm thinking about," Laverne said, "if you want to know. I'm not thinking about him. I'm thinking about you."
"Me."
"You said a thing in the galley. Before he came out. The curtain doesn't go all the way, you know. Everybody in the first three rows heard you. The girl with the baby heard you. The man in front of me heard you. I heard you." She was watching Billie's face with the alert, tired eyes. "You said Houston. You said a name."
"Leonard Amadi."
"Leonard Amadi," Laverne repeated, in the voice she must have used to take roll. "Did you ever write it down? What you saw?"
"No."