“The postman always rings twice”

“The postman always rings twice” is an expression of recurrence that, in the book, gives a chance meeting the force of an expected return. A woman invokes it while speaking with Roy Freeman, explaining why she had anticipated that someone would ask her about a long-ago time.

The Expression in Context

The woman recalls agreeing a couple of months earlier to talk to a reporter about the story. Afterwards, the expression came to mind: she expected that someone would seek her out to ask about the past. She calls this expectation female intuition, presenting the saying as a way to make sense of an encounter that feels foretold rather than accidental.

The Meeting with Freeman

The expression is spoken as Freeman and the woman pass Zanelli’s Cafe and go inside. Over red wine for her and coffee for him, she says she had in a way been expecting him. The reporter she had previously agreed to speak with was John Keller, who had given Freeman an excerpt from Richard Flynn’s manuscript. Freeman tells her that something has since occurred and explains Frank Spoel’s account of the night in question; she listens without interrupting. In this scene, the saying links the anticipated interview to Freeman’s arrival and to the return of a buried episode through competing accounts.