He also had the responsibility of steeping the chunks, either in Thumper’s Meadow Magic Sauce, which smelled like hot blacktop, or in Thumper’s Forest Flavoring, which Farrell had renamed “Twilight in the Everglades.” For the rest, he mopped the floors, scoured the ovens and the deep fryer, and, before he left in the evening, pulled the switch that lit up the grinning, eyerolling, foot-flapping bunny on the roof. The bunny was supposed to be holding a Big Bear Bucket of Cottontail Crispies, or it might have been Jackrabbit Joints or Hare Pieces. Farrell was entitled to one Big Bear Bucket a day, but he took his meals at a Japanese restaurant around the corner.

So did Mr. McIntire, the manager of Thumper’s. A hulking, silent man with a red face and hair as gray and sticky as old soap, he winced visibly to serve Wabbit Wieners and pushed the bright baskets of Bunny Buns across the counter with his fingertips. Farrell felt sorry for Mr. McIntire and made an omelette for him his fifth day on the job. It was a Basque piperade, with onions, two kinds of peppers, tomatoes, and ham. Farrell added a special blend of herbs and spices, acquired from a Bolivian lawyer in exchange for the lyrics of Ode to Billie Joe, and served the omelette to Mr. McIntire on a paper plate with pink and blue rabbit tracks printed all over it.

Mr. McIntire ate half of the omelette and abruptly put the plate aside, saying nothing, twitching his shoulders. But he tagged after Farrell all that afternoon, talking to him in a dry, mournful susurrus about mushroom and chicken-liver souffles. “I never meant to wind up running a place like this,” he confided. “I used to know how to cook burgundy beef, caramel baked beans. Bubble-and-squeak. Remind me, I’ll show you how to make bubble-and-squeak. It’s English. I used to go with this English girl, in Portsmouth, in the war. I was gonna open a restaurant in Portsmouth, but we broke up.”