I tried to do what he said, and while what I observed would never have stood up in court, it convinced me. There were webworks of lines spraying out from the corners of his eyes, and the lids had the tiny, delicately ruffled wrinkles you see on people who no longer have to flash their Senior Discount Cards when they step up to the multiplex box office. Skin-grooves that hadn’t been there yesterday evening now made sine-waves across Al’s brow. Two more lines—much deeper ones—bracketed his mouth. His chin was sharper, and the skin on his neck had grown loose. The sharp chin and wattled throat could have been caused by Al’s catastrophic weight loss, but those lines… and if he wasn’t lying about his hair…
He was smiling a little. It was a grim smile, but not without actual humor. Which somehow made it worse. “Remember my birthday last March? ‘Don’t worry, Al,’ you said, ‘if that stupid party hat catches on fire while you’re hanging over the grill, I’ll grab the fire extinguisher and put you out.’ Remember that?”
I did. “You said you were an official Heinz.”
“So I did. And now I’m sixty-two. I know the cancer makes me look even older, but these… and these…” He touched his forehead, then the corner of one eye. “These are authentic age-tattoos. Badges of honor, in a way.”
“Al… can I have a glass of water?”
“Of course. Shock, isn’t it?” He looked at me sympathetically. “You’re thinking, ‘Either I’m crazy, he’s crazy, or we both are.’ I know. I’ve been there.”
He levered himself out of the booth with an effort, his right hand going up beneath his left armpit, as if he were trying to hold himself together, somehow. Then he led me around the counter. As he did so, I put my finger on another element of this unreal encounter: except for the occasions when I shared a pew with himat St. Cyril’s (these were rare; although I was raised in the faith, I’m not much of a Catlick) or happened to meet him on the street, I’d never seen Al out of his cook’s apron.
He took a sparkling glass down and drew me a glass of water from a sparkling chrome-plated tap. I thanked him and turned to go back to the booth, but he tapped me on the shoulder. I wish he hadn’t done that. It was like being tapped by Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who stoppeth one of three.
“I want you to see something before we sit down again. It’ll be quicker that way. Onlyseeingisn’t the right word. I guessexperiencingis a lot closer. Drink up, buddy.”
I drank half the water. It was cool and good, but I never took my eye off him. That craven part of me was expecting to be jumped, like the first unwitting victim in one of those maniac-on-the-loose movies that always seem to have numbers in their titles. But Al only stood there with one hand propped on the counter. The hand was wrinkled, the knuckles big. It didn’t look like the hand of a man in his fifties, even one with cancer, and—
“Did the radiation do that?” I asked suddenly.
“Do what?”
“You have atan.Not to mention those dark spots on the backs of your hands. You get those either from radiation or too much sun.”
“Well, since I haven’t had any radiation treatments, that leaves the sun. I’ve gotten quite a lot of it over the last four years.”
So far as I knew, Al had spent most of the last four years flipping burgers and making milkshakes under fluorescent lights, but I didn’t say so. I just drank the rest of my water. When I set the glass down on the Formica counter, I noticed my hand was shaking slightly.
“Okay, what is it you want me to see? Or to experience?”
“Come this way.”
He led me down the long, narrow galley area, past the double grill, the Fry-O-Lators, the sink, the FrostKing fridge, and the humming waist-high freezer. He stopped in front of the silentdishwasher and pointed to the door at the far end of the kitchen. It was low; Al would have to duck his head going through it, and he was only five-seven or so. I’m six-four—some of the kids called me Helicopter Epping.
“That’s it,” he said. “Through that door.”
“Isn’t that your pantry?” Strictly a rhetorical question; I’d seen him bring out enough cans, sacks of potatoes, and bags of dry goods over the years to know damn well what it was.
Al seemed not to have heard. “Did you know I originally opened this joint in Auburn?”
“No.”
He nodded, and just that was enough to kick off another bout of coughing. He stifled it with the increasingly gruesome handkerchief. When the latest fit finally tapered off, he tossed the handkerchief into a handy trash can, then grabbed a swatch of napkins from a dispenser on the counter.
“It’s an Aluminaire, made in the thirties and as art deco as they come. Wanted one ever since my dad took me to the Chat ’N Chew in Bloomington, back when I was a kid. Bought it fully outfitted and opened up on Pine Street. I was at that location for almost a year, and I saw that if I stayed, I’d be bankrupt in another year. There were too many other quick-bite joints in the neighborhood, some good, some not so good, all of em with their regulars. I was like a kid fresh out of law school who hangs out his shingle in a town that already has a dozen well-established shysters. Also, in those days Al’s Famous Fatburger sold for two-fifty. Even back in 1990 two and a half was the best I could do.”
“Then how in hell do you sell it for less than half that now? Unless it reallyiscat.”
He snorted, a sound that produced a phlegmy echo of itself deep in his chest. “Buddy, what I sell is a hundred percent pure American beef, the best in the world. Do I know what people say? Sure. I shrug it off. What else can you do? Stop people from talking? You might as well try to stop the wind from blowing.”
I ran a finger across my throat. Al smiled.
“Yeah, gettin off on one of those sidetracks, I know, but at least this one’s part of the story.
“I could have kept beating my head against the wall on Pine Street, but Yvonne Templeton didn’t raise any fools. ‘Better to run away and fight again some other day,’ she used to tell us kids. I took the last of my capital, wheedled the bank into loaning me another five grand—don’t ask me how—and moved here to The Falls. Business still hasn’t been great, not with the economy the way it is and not with all that stupid talk about Al’s Catburgers or Dogburgers or Skunkburgers or whatever tickles people’s fancy, but it turns out I’m no longer tied to the economy the way other people are. And it’s all because of what’s behind that pantry door. It wasn’t there when I was set up in Auburn, I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles ten feet high. It only showed up here.”
“What are you talking about?”
