I did. “You said you were an official Heinz.”

“So I did. And now I’m sixty-two. I know the cancer makes me look even older, but these. . and these. .” He touched his forehead, then the corner of one eye. “These are authentic age-tattoos. Badges of honor, in a way.”

“Al. . can I have a glass of water?”

“Of course. Shock, isn’t it?” He looked at me sympathetically. “You’re thinking, ‘Either I’m crazy, he’s crazy, or we both are.’ I know. I’ve been there.”

He levered himself out of the booth with an effort, his right hand going up beneath his left armpit, as if he were trying to hold himself together, somehow. Then he led me around the counter. As he did so, I put my finger on another element of this unreal encounter: except for the occasions when I shared a pew with him at St. Cyril’s (these were rare; although I was raised in the faith, I’m not much of a Catlick) or happened to meet him on the street, I’d never seen Al out of his cook’s apron.

He took a sparkling glass down and drew me a glass of water from a sparkling chrome-plated tap. I thanked him and turned to go back to the booth, but he tapped me on the shoulder. I wish he hadn’t done that. It was like being tapped by Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who stoppeth one of three.

“I want you to see something before we sit down again. It’ll be quicker that way. Only seeing isn’t the right word. I guess experiencing is a lot closer. Drink up, buddy.”

I drank half the water. It was cool and good, but I never took my eye off him. That craven part of me was expecting to be jumped, like the first unwitting victim in one of those maniac-on-the-loose movies that always seem to have numbers in their titles. But Al only stood there with one hand propped on the counter. The hand was wrinkled, the knuckles big. It didn’t look like the hand of a man in his fifties, even one with cancer, and—

“Did the radiation do that?” I asked suddenly.