Chip points to an overstuffed chair close to the bed. “Sit down and tell me all about yourself while I get ready. And then let’s go out and get a meal. I want some grease. My mother’s driving me crazy with her health food. She’s trying to turn me into a macrobiotic, for Christ’s sake.”

This is not exactly what the program is supposed to be. But do I mind? No. I’m going on a lunch date with Chip Reardon, cancer patient. After he interviews me. I watch him put on his sneakers and tie a blue bandana around his head that does a fairly good job of covering his incision. I’m trying not to feel too thrilled while I tell him what’s happened in my life.

• • •

It’s warm out, but with no humidity to speak of. Chip wants to walk somewhere to eat, and we decide on Ned’s Place, one of my favorite restaurants, only a few blocks away. Chip’s never been there; it’s only been around for five or six years. It’s tiny—five tables, five stools at the counter. It’s in a white, freestanding building that looks like a child’s playhouse—there’s a little porch attached where I tie Frank when we come here, black shutters at the window, red geraniums in the window boxes. Inside, there are small shaded lamps on the wall over every table, as though the place is half ’40s nightclub. The menu features a drawing of burned toast coming out of a smiling toaster. Once I asked Lindy, who, along with her husband, Al, owns the place, why she put a picture of burned toast on the menu. “Al likes it,” she said.

Everybody who goes to Ned’s loves it, including Frank—Lindy always gives him great scraps. The best time is early morning, when the regulars are lined up on the stools, hats on their heads with the bills turned emphatically frontward. Nearly all the regulars are men, ranging in age from their late teens to their late eighties. They don’t bother Al, who stands quietly cooking at the grill behind the counter, but they’re after Lindy all the time. Once, when she was giving it back to them pretty good, one of the guys said, “Jesus! Does anybody know when laryngitis season starts?”