I don't know why I said that. I had not said that to anyone in years. He didn't ask what I meant. He just nodded again, slowly, and looked down at his hands.
At ten after four he got down off the stool and put on his bookbag, both straps. He stood there a second. Then he said, "Thank you for the grilled cheese that the man didn't want," and he looked at Stosh and said, "Thank you for burning it," and Stosh, who had three daughters and seven grandchildren and a heart like an old dog's, said, "Anytime, kid," without turning around, and I saw his shoulders do something funny.
"What's your name?" I said as he got to the door.
He stopped with his hand on the push bar. The bell was already shaking a little, waiting to ring.
"Casey," he said. And then he said, "What's yours?"
I tapped my name tag, which said DODIE in raised white letters on red plastic, the way all of them had said since Helen bought the label maker in 1968.
"I know," he said, "but what's your real one?"
"Delores," I said, surprised. "Delores Kovach. Nobody's called me Delores since the nuns."
He nodded a third time, like a little judge, and pushed out the door, and the bell rang, and I watched him through the front window walk down State Street toward the bus stop in front of the Isaly's, his bookbag bumping, his hands in the pockets of that too-small jacket, until a WRTA bus came heaving up the hill and swallowed him and took him north.
"Funny kid," said Lefty Sopko from the corner booth.
"Funny how?" I said.