"You don't have to," the old man said.
"I know I don't." I had my phone out, and then remembered that the post office doesn't take tap-to-pay for money orders, which I knew because I had once tried to send rent to a landlord in a hurry and been turned away with the same patient look Dot was giving me now. Money orders, cash or debit only. I put the phone away and found my wallet. "How much?"
Dot counted. She did it fast, with the side of her hand, sweeping the quarter stacks into her palm and the dimes after them, and she said, "Forty-five eighty-five here. So you need six dollars and forty cents."
I gave her a ten. She gave me back three dollars and sixty cents, which I put in the old man's coat pocket while he was looking at the counter, and he felt it go in and said, "Hey," and I said, "That's your change. You gave her the ten, I just handed it over," and he looked at me with his mouth slightly open and did not say anything else.
It was the first time I really saw his face. He was old, older than I had thought from behind, eighty at least, with skin that had gone loose and spotted along the jaw and a nose that had been broken once, a long time ago, and set crooked. His eyes were pale gray and wet at the rims. There was a white scar through his left eyebrow that split it into two short pieces. He had shaved that morning, carefully, and missed a patch under his right ear, and something about that missed patch, the effort of the rest of it and the one place the shaking hand had not been able to reach, made my throat close up in a way that embarrassed me.
"I'll pay you back," he said.
"You won't, though," I said. "I'm only in town for another week."
"Then I'll pay somebody else back."
"That works."
Dot printed the money order. The machine behind her made a sound like a small animal clearing its throat and pushed out the long slip of paper with the Statue of Liberty watermark on it, and she tore it along the perforations and laid it on the counter in front of him with a pen.
"Purchaser and payee," she said. "And the address. You know the drill."