She turned around, left the kitchen through a side door. I stood there, listening to bells and flute and harp.

Behind me, the gray-braided woman said, “Don’t worry, she’ll be back.”

“I was wondering if it was something I said.”

She laughed. “No, she’s just shy. Heck of a cook, though.”

Aimee returned with a small wheel of white cheese. “You can sit,” she said, in a very soft voice. “I’ll bring it to you.”

“Thanks much.” I tried another smile, and her mouth quivered upward for less than a second, and she began wiping the crepe pan.

The gray-haired woman finished her meal just as Aimee brought me my plate, a mug of coffee, utensils wrapped in a heavy yellow linen napkin. She returned to her vegetables and the gray-braided woman said, “Here you are, dear,” and paid her cash. No change exchanged. No credit card signs anywhere in the café.

I unfolded the napkin, looked at my plate. Two crepes.

With her back to me, Aimee said, “You only have to pay for one. I had lots of cheese.”

“Thank you,” I said. “They look delicious.”

Chop chop chop.

I cut into the first crepe and took a bite and flavor burst on my tongue. The coffee was the best I’d had in years, and I said so.

Chop chop chop.

I was working on the second crepe when the front door opened, and a man walked in and headed for the counter.

Short, chubby, white-haired, he wore a purplish red polyester jumpsuit, zipped in front, with big floppy lapels. Crimson clogs and white socks clad stubby feet. His fingers were attenuated, too, the thumbs little more than arced nubs. His ruddy face was impish but peaceful—an elf in repose. A leather-thonged bolo tie was held in place by a big, shapeless purple rock. Flashing on his left hand was a huge, gold pinkie ring set with a violet cabochon.

He looked to be in his midsixties, but I knew he was seventy-seven because I knew him. I also understood why he wore a single color: It was the only hue he could perceive in an otherwise black-and-white world. A rare form of color blindness was one of a host of physical anomalies he’d been born with. Some, like the shortened digits, were visible. Others, he’d assured me, were not.

Dr. Wilbert Harrison, psychiatrist, anthropologist, philosopher, eternal student. A sweet and decent man, and even a murderous psychopath bent on revenge had recognized that, sparing Harrison as he conducted a rampage against the doctors he believed had tormented him.

I hadn’t been spared, and I’d met Bert Harrison, years ago, trying to figure all of that out. Since then we talked occasionally—infrequently.

“Bert,” I said.

He turned, smiled. “Alex!” Holding up a finger, he greeted Aimee. Without making eye contact, she poured him tea and selected an almond-crusted pastry from the glass case beneath the blackboard.