He nods. “Get locked up for assault and battery, you start to reconsider things. Realized if I wanted to end up like Dad, all I had to do was keep going the way I was and I end up there sure as shootin’.” Every once in a while, I can really hear the Louisiana in his voice. “Or, I could pick a different path. So, I quit feeling sorry for myself and quit letting my anger at a shitty hand in life make me ornery, and I found someone that’d let me work with wood. A shop teacher at a local community college. Mr. Greene.” He sighs, thinks back. “He never asked me a single question. Saw me on the street one day, whittling, invited me to the college shop, and we ended up friends. He let me come as much as I wanted while the college was open, and even if he was teaching class, I could be there working on something.”

“Were you homeless?” I ask.

He nods. Spears more pancakes, and suddenly I’m glad I made what I’d thought would way too many. “For a time.”

“You’ve overcome a lot of hardship, haven’t you?” I sip coffee, and then mimosa.

“I guess,” he says. “But I’ve never really thought about it like that. It’s just my life. It is what it is. Shit comes at you, you can either lay down and let it roll over you, or you can figure it out.” He tosses back the last of his mimosa. “Lisa getting killed, though, that’s a hardship I couldn’t figure out. Getting over her was just too goddamn hard. It was so sudden, so unexpected. She was just…gone. And I …I couldn’t deal.”

I nod. “I know how that feels. The not being able to deal.”

He eyes me. “Yeah, I guess you do.”

I hand him my wineglass. “More, please.”

He snickers, and fixes us both another. The pancakes are nearly gone by now, two-thirds of them in his belly. My appetite is coming back, slowly but surely, and I find myself taking thirds, to my own surprise.

The coffee pour-over thing is empty, and he lifts it. “You want more?”

I nod. “If the question is coffee, the answer is always yes.”

“Be right back. You keep eatin’, I’m full.”

A few minutes later, my plate is empty, my belly is about to burst, and he’s clomping up the steps with a fresh pot of coffee. There are three pancakes left, and I notice him eying them.

I stab them with my fork, fix them the way I saw him do it for himself, butter on each one, syrup. I’m not sure why, but I cut them up, too.

And then I had the plate to him.