He ate the way young men eat, fast, hunched, elbows out, in big bites, and when he was done he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and then on the napkin, and he sat back on the stool and put his hand flat on his stomach and said, "Man. That's just how I remember it. You tell the cook that's just how I remember it."
"I'll tell him."
He reached into his back pocket for his wallet. When he opened it I could see a lot of twenties. He took out a ten and laid it on the counter, and put his cap on, and stood up. The check was a dollar thirty-five.
"Keep it," he said.
I looked at the ten. I knew whose it was. I knew exactly whose it was, I'd read the passbook, I'd seen the column of numbers going down. I knew that ten dollars was a piece of twenty years of eleven-dollar deposits from a milk check, a piece of somebody's Christmas money and burial money and new hip money, and he'd put it on my counter like a man tipping a bellhop.
"That's too much," I said.
"Naw," he said. "You've been good to me. You and Jodie both. Hey, listen —" and he leaned his hands on the counter, and lowered his voice, friendly, confiding, like a son-in-law. "If my gramma does turn up. I'd sure appreciate you giving me a call out at the house before you do anything else. Before you call anybody official, I mean. She gets scared of uniforms. And whatever she tells you — you know. You have to take it with a grain of salt. She's not herself. She'd tell you I was Jack the Ripper if she got the idea in her head." He smiled. "You know how it is with old people. They get things mixed up."
"I know how it is," I said.