“That’s the way it is with guests,” Selma had said once. “You clean your entire home and your visitor goes straight to the one spot you missed.”

“That’s Martin,” I said. Martin and I were four years old in the picture. Selma had taken it at carnival. I was dressed up as a violet with Elsbeth’s much-too-large violet hat on my head. Martin was a strawberry. The optician had draped artificial turf over his shoulders and was a convincing flower bed. He carried Martin in his arms.

“The bookcase is crooked,” Frederik said without taking his eyes from the photograph.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Very.”

“I had an idea. There’s a Japanese restaurant here that serves a dish called Buddhist fasting meal, so I thought—”

“To be honest,” Frederik said, “what I really want are french fries. French fries with ketchup.”

We walked through the county seat, Alaska between us, and I was amazed that people weren’t staring at Frederik and his beauty, that there weren’t car accidents, that people didn’t crane their necks and run into lampposts, that a couple passing us, deep in conversation, didn’t forever lose the thread of their thoughts. A few people looked at us out of the corner of their eyes, but only because of his cowl.

We went into a snack bar. There were two high tables and a slot machine. A television suspended over one of the two tables blared. The slot machine flashed and tootled. It smelled of old fat.

“It’s nice here,” Frederik said, and he meant it.

Frederik ate four servings of fries. “Would you like some more?” he kept asking after I’d finished my serving, holding out a fry speared on a plastic fork. “They’re excellent.”

Just then Al Bano and Romina Power appeared on the television overhead, singing “Felicità.” “That reminds me: How are things with your mom and the ice-cream parlor owner?” Frederik asked, pouring another packet of ketchup over his fries.

“Good. But I think my mother still loves my father.”

“Excellent. And your father?”

“He’s traveling.”

“And that optician? Did he tell your grandmother?”

“No.”

“Excellent,” Frederik said, shoving five fries into his mouth at the same time.

I smiled at him. “So, what do you eat in Japan?”

“Mostly rice with not much else,” he answered, wiping ketchup from the corner of his mouth. “Is there any Coke left? Hang on, I’ll get us another Coke.”