“No clue, buddy. I told you, there’s all kinds of stuff I don’t know. There are rules, and I’ve figured out a few, but not many.” His face lit in a wan but genuinely amused smile. “You brought back your root beer, didn’t you? Still sloshing around in your belly, isn’t it?”

As a matter of fact it was.

“Well there you go. I’ll see you tonight, Jake. I’ll be rested and we’ll talk this out.”

“One more question?”

He flicked a hand at me, a go-ahead gesture. I noticed that his nails, which he always kept scrupulously clean, were yellow and cracked. Another bad sign. Not as telling as the thirty-pound weight loss, but still bad. My dad used to say you can tell a lot about a person’s health just by the state of his or her fingernails.

“The Famous Fatburger.”

“What about it?” But there was a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“You can sell cheap because you buy cheap, isn’t that right?”

“Ground chuck from the Red & White,” he said. “Fifty-four cents a pound. I go in every week. Or I did until my latest adventure, which took me a long way from The Falls. I trade with Mr. Warren, the butcher. If I ask him for ten pounds of ground chuck, he says, ‘Coming right up.’ If I ask for twelve or fourteen, he says, ‘Going to have to give me a minute to grind you up some fresh. Having a family get-together?’”

“Always the same.”

“Yes.”

“Because it’s always the first time.”

“Correct. It’s like the story of the loaves and fishes in the Bible, when you think of it. I buy the same ground chuck week after week. I’ve fed it to hundreds or thousands of people, in spite of those stupid catburger rumors, and it always renews itself.”

“You buy the same meat, over and over.” Trying to get it through my skull.

“The same meat, at the same time, from the same butcher.