The boy was trimming the old man’s toenails with the scissor accessory on his Swiss Army Knife. Brittle chunks of yellow nail popped over the boy’s head and landed on the parquet floor of the tiny living room. The grandfather sat in his favorite Mission-style oak chair with the Daily Racing Form spread neatly across his lap, a Pall Mall burning in the stand-up ashtray beside him. The click of the nail chips landing on the polished wood, a lone mockingbird outside the window, and the old man’s raspy breath were the only sounds. The boy kept working methodically, careful not to trim the corners of the nails too closely. He’d made that mistake once before and his grandfather came up lame for a week, necessitating long soaks in Epsom salts and apple vinegar. The grandfather never complained but the boy had to endure days of no words when the old man just seemed to drop deeper and deeper inside himself until, suddenly, one morning he sprang out of his chair, walked barefoot straight down to the Russian River, and waded in up to his chest. After that his toes were fine and he began talking again in his usual enthusiastic sprees. Now he’s fully recovered. His toes are glowing like healthy night crawlers. He reaches for his red Bic pen and circles the name of a horse he likes in the eighth—“Monkish,” a brown gelding shipping up from Pomona. In the blank column beside the name he scribbles “diminishing lengths—closes—just missed last out going 1 and 1⁄ 8.” He caps the pen and returns it to his shirt pocket, then reaches for his Pall Mall. “This is the way it’s supposed to be,” he thinks, as he nestles his spine against the firm back of the chair; the way he’s always imagined. There is no gap between his imagining and the way things are. He speaks softly to the boy kneeling at his gnarly feet. “Last week—when was it? When was that last week when we walked to supper down there by the river? You remember—it was coming dusk, I think.”

“Oh, down at the Inn, you mean?” the boy answers, continuing with his work.

“That’s it! ‘The Inn.’ Simple name like that. Think I could remember something simple like that.”

“Yeah—‘The Inn.’ That’s what they call it.”

“Good food as I remember. Crispy duck. What is that? Some kind of Chinese deal, ‘crispy duck’?”

“You like that. You always have that.”

“You had your usual tuna melt.”

“I did?” the boy says.

“Don’t you start gettin’ forgetful on me now. We don’t need the both of us in the same jackpot.”

“No, I remember. I always have the tuna melt.”

“There ya go— And there was a girl down there. She seemed to know you. Who was that girl down there?”

“What girl’s that, Grandpa?”