“I go back to fill a special order for lamb shanks. It was the Passover, you know. Never enough lamb shanks at the Passover. When I come back, Oscar has taken off his apron, and he hands it to me. ‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘But Oscar, still you have half an hour of duty,’ I tell him. ‘Busiest time. And the Passover!’ But he doesn’t care. ‘Tell the manager the beef stops here,’ he says. Then he takes your mother’s hand, pulls her out of the chair—maybe that same chair you sit in now. He pulls her up, and now she’s laughing instead of crying, and then they run out the back way, like two cuckoos in love. That’s the last anyone has ever seen of them.”

The Schwa stared at him, slack-jawed.

“There you have it,” Gunther said, crossing his legs in satisfaction. “Do you want me to tell it again?”

The Schwa’s head began to shake, but not in the normal controlled way. It kind of moved like one of those bobble-head dolls. “My mother ran away with the butcher?”

“It is more correct to say that he ran away with her . . . but yes, this is what happened.”

His head kept on bobbling. “My mother ran away with the BUTCHER?”

Gunther looked at me, as if I should explain why the Schwa kept repeating the question.

The Schwa was borderline ballistic. “What kind of sick person runs off with a butcher, and leaves her five-year-old kid in the frozen-food section?”

“These are questions I cannot answer,” Gunther said.

“The important thing,” I told him, “is that she didn’t disappear.”

“THIS IS WORSE!” he screamed so suddenly it made Gunther jump. “THIS IS WAY WORSE! THE BUTCHER?”

He stood up and his chair flew out behind him, hitting a stainless-steel table that rang out like a bell. “I hate her! I hate her guts! I hate her hate her hate her!”

Gunther stood and backed away. “Maybe I go finish cleaning.” Since emotional customers weren’t his thing, he disappeared into the meat locker to hide.

Now it wasn’t just the Schwa’s head that was shaking, it was his whole body. His fists were clenched and quivering, turning white as his face turned red.

“She left me there, and I thought . . . I thought it was my fault.”

“Calvin, it’s all right!” said Lexie.

“No, it’s not! It’s never going to be all right! How could it ever be? How could you even say that?”