"I'm old. I repeat myself." He looked at my chin again, quickly, and then away. "Where did you learn to say that? What you said. About looking."
"Work," I said. "I'm a 911 dispatcher. In Columbus. I say it to people about twenty times a week."
"Dispatcher," he repeated. He said it like a word in a language he was trying to learn. "That's a hard job."
"It has its days."
"You're good at it. I can tell." He put his cap on. His hands had trouble with that too, and I wanted to help, and I did not, and I think he noticed that I did not, and I think he was grateful. "Whoever taught you to say that," he said, "they knew what they were doing."
"Nobody taught me. I just say it."
He nodded, but it was a strange nod, as if I had said something that confirmed a thing he already knew. Behind me Mack cleared his throat and stepped up to the counter with his envelopes, and the line lurched forward one body-length all at once, like a train taking up slack, and the woman with the toddler pushed my box of quilts along the floor with her foot, which I appreciated more than I can say.
I walked with the old man toward the corner where the mail slots were. It was maybe fifteen steps. He took them slowly, cane and foot, cane and foot, and I matched him.
"Fifty dollars every month?" I asked. I don't know why I asked. Maybe because I had just paid six dollars and forty cents of it and felt, irrationally, that this gave me some small share in whatever it was. "Same as always, you said."
"Same as always."
"How long have you been doing it?"