“Al, none of this makes any sense to me. Yesterday you were here and you were fine.”

“Take a good close look at my face. Start with my hair and work your way down. Try to ignore what the cancer’s doing to me — it plays hell with a person’s looks, no doubt about that — and then tell me I’m the same man you saw yesterday.”

“Well, you obviously washed the dye out—”

“Never used any. I won’t bother directing your attention to the teeth I lost while I was. . away. I know you saw those. You think an X-ray machine did that? Or strontium-90 in the milk? I don’t even drink milk, except for a splash in my last cup of coffee of the day.”

“Strontium what?”

“Never mind. Get in touch with your, you know, feminine side. Look at me the way women look at other women when they’re judging age.”

I tried to do what he said, and while what I observed would never have stood up in court, it convinced me. There were webworks of lines spraying out from the corners of his eyes, and the lids had the tiny, delicately ruffled wrinkles you see on people who no longer have to flash their Senior Discount Cards when they step up to the multiplex box office. Skin-grooves that hadn’t been there yesterday evening now made sine-waves across Al’s brow. Two more lines — much deeper ones — bracketed his mouth. His chin was sharper, and the skin on his neck had grown loose. The sharp chin and wattled throat could have been caused by Al’s catastrophic weight loss, but those lines. . and if he wasn’t lying about his hair. .

He was smiling a little. It was a grim smile, but not without actual humor. Which somehow made it worse. “Remember my birthday last March? ‘Don’t worry, Al,’ you said, ‘if that stupid party hat catches on fire while you’re hanging over the grill, I’ll grab the fire extinguisher and put you out.’ Remember that?”