“You really know how to hurt a guy,” he said, breaking off a piece of cake and biting heartily. “You know I’m on a diet.” Powdered sugar speckled his tie as he spoke.

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“S’true. It’s my own special diet. Absolutely no carbohydrates—except for Entenmann’s cake. That’s a free food. All other portions have to be measured, but Entenmann’s is ad lib.” He took another big bite and spoke around it. Crumb cake always made him manic. “Did I tell you I added a codicil to my will? I’ve decided that after I’m cremated I want my ashes buried in an Entenmann’s box. Or if I’m not cremated, it should be a white, glass-topped coffin with blue lettering on the side.” He held up the cake box. “Just like this. Either way, I want to be interred on a grassy slope overlooking the Entenmann’s plant in Bay Shore.”

Jack tried to smile but it must have been a poor attempt. Abe stopped in mid-chew.

“What’s eating up your quderim?”

“Saw Gia today.”

“Nu?”

“It’s over. Really over.”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I knew it but I didn’t believe it.” Jack forced himself to ask a question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. “Am I crazy, Abe? Is there something wrong in my head for wanting to live this way? Is my pilot light flickering and I don’t know it?”

Without taking his eyes from Jack’s face, Abe put down his piece of cake and made a half-hearted attempt to brush off his front. He succeeded only in smearing the sugar specks on his tie into large white blotches.

“What did she do to you?”

“Opened my eyes, maybe. Sometimes it takes an outsider to make you see yourself as you really are.”

“And you see what?”

Jack took a deep breath. “A crazy man. A violent crazy man.”

“That’s what her eyes see. But what does she know? Does she know about Mr. Canelli? Does she know about your mother? Does she know how you got to be Repairman Jack?”

“Nope. Didn’t wait to hear.”

“There! You see? She knows nothing! She understands nothing! And she’s closed her mind to you, so who wants someone like that?”

“Me!”

“Well,” Abe said, rubbing a hand across his forehead and leaving a white smear, “that I can’t argue with.” He glared at Jack. “How old are you?”

Jack had to think a second. He always felt stupid when he had to remember his age.

“Uhh… thirty-four.”

“Thirty-four. Surely you’ve been ditched before?”

“Abe… I can’t remember ever feeling about anyone the way I feel about Gia. And she’s afraid of me!”

“Fear of the unknown. She doesn’t know you, so she’s afraid of you. I know all about you. Am I afraid?”

“Aren’t you? Ever?”

“Never!” He trotted back behind the counter and picked up a copy of the New York Post. Rifling through the pages, he said, “Look—a five-year-old beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend! A guy with a straight razor slashes eight people in Times Square last night and then disappears into a subway! A headless, handless torso is found in a West Side hotel room! As a hit-and-run victim lays bleeding in the street, people run up to him, rob him, and then leave him there. I should be afraid of you?”