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“There’s a third course,” he said. “If you’d like to go on.”

Leo pulled himself back into the present. “I would.”

The third course, as it turned out, required a fire.

Nate built it in a ring of bricks a few steps from the table. And while the bricks were new, the wood was not. Leo recognized it almost immediately.

“You’re planning to burn my house?”

“It’s lath from the dining room. It’s half rot.” Nate held a piece up. “Look at it. It’s deader than you.”

“So your plan is to cremate it?”

“My plan is to have a fire.” Nate crouched and stacked the pieces. “Do I have your permission?”

Leo drifted around the brick ring once, inspecting the pile. It contained exactly what Nate had said. Nothing he could object to, which was mildly disappointing.

“Proceed,” he said.

Nate lit the fire.

It caught fast, causing the smell of woodsmoke to roll over the table. Leo’s house, going up warm into the dark. He settled at the edge of the ring and found, to his surprise, that he didn’t mind. The house had given him nothing but cold for fifty years. It owed him one warm evening.

Nate dragged his chair over, sat, and produced a paper bag and a long fork.

“Let’s have marshmallows,” he said.

Leo remembered marshmallows. The bag looked wrong — too glossy — but the shapes inside were familiar, soft white lumps, and Leo knew exactly how they should be roasted. You kept them out of the flame and you toasted them golden.

Nate did not seem to know this. He speared a marshmallow, held it into the flames, and set it on fire.

“What are you doing?” Leo demanded. “It’s burning. Nate. It’s burning!”

“I know.” Nate let it burn. Then he pulled it out, blew the flame off, and looked at the blackened lump with satisfaction.

Leo stared. “You’ve ruined it.”

“Nope. I like them this way.” He ate it. Made a sound about it, too. It was an unfairly pleasant sound, and Leo lost his train of thought for a moment before finding it again.

“It’s charcoal.”

Nate licked his lips. “It’s caramel.”

Leo had another thing to say, but he forgot what it was as his eyes followed the motion of Nate’s tongue. Shaking himself out of his stupor, he tried to regain his dignity. “You need to do another one, and do it correctly. Then you’ll see that you’re wrong.”

“If that would make you happy.” Nate speared a second marshmallow and held it out at the fire’s edge. “Like this?”

“Lower. Not in the flame, near it. Near it. Now turn.” The marshmallow turned. “Slower. No, not that slowly, one side is browning faster. Rotate!”

“You’re a tyrant,” Nate said, rotating. But he said it with a smile, and the marshmallow came out perfectly golden. A gold star example of what a marshmallow should look like.

Nate ate it in one bite.

“Well?” Leo demanded.

Nate chewed. Considered. “The burnt ones are better.”

“Get out of my restaurant.”