Meanwhile, in The GrouchClub...
Lita's last words before they leave are scoffed at, a dismissive sniff. "He don't need you to take care of him, he's just not stupid enough to lose a chance to get you alone," she tells the back of the door, as if the door itself is dense not to see it. She knows her brother probably thinks this is his last chance to get some time with Lita, as if she is any different than any other woman, as if she is any less gone on him than every damn other one ever has been just because he feels it too this time. As if she'll be able to resist. Adelaide knows better. He might talk Lita up to high heaven, but she's still just a woman.
And so with his pupils heart-shaped like some drooling cartoon wolf going "awwwwoga" he's gone again as fast as he arrived, walled off from them already while he acts like that's not significant. Like the presence of some person in his life won't change anything. His love is not finite and Adelaide knows it - his love is boundless, but his time is not, and one more demand on it is utterly unwelcome. Adelaide has had enough of interruptions to her time with Jims for one lifetime.
She pours the noodle soup, fragrant with lemongrass - albeit lemongrass from a packaged powder - into two bowls, one large and one smaller, and brings it over to the table to set down. "Merry way my ass, if either of them comes out of there before morning I'm Paul Bunyan," she says, meeting Sarge's gaze and taking heart, focusing back in on the fact that this little drama is the least of what's going on. She sits down beside him, expecting him to be brittle, to be reticent and wary as a traumatized animal. She lets her arm rest against his anyway, looks to his profile. "If you ain't hungry you should probably just pretend you are," she says, a wry but gentle mutter since she thinks it's pretty clear Jims isn't coming to eat.